CG 20 37 Edition Dates: 10 01, 07 04, 04 13 and 12 19

Last updated August 2026.

CG 20 37 is the ISO endorsement that adds someone as an additional insured for completed operations, and the four digits after the form number decide how much protection it really transfers. The 10 01 edition used a broad "arising out of" trigger and no limits cap. The 07 04 edition narrowed the trigger to damage "caused, in whole or in part, by" your work. The 04 13 edition added two hard limitations: coverage applies only to the extent permitted by law, and it can never be broader than your contract required. The 12 19 edition kept those and quietly deleted the words "shown in the Declarations" from the limits cap.

Every wording quoted below was read directly from the ISO form documents rather than summarized from a secondary source, because secondary descriptions of these forms are frequently wrong about which edition did what.

What do the numbers after CG 20 37 mean?

They are a month and a year. CG 20 37 04 13 is the April 2013 edition of form CG 20 37. ISO revises its forms periodically, and each revision carries a new edition date while the form number stays the same. That is the whole problem: a contract requiring "CG 20 37" is satisfied by any of four materially different documents, and the certificate rarely tells you which one is attached.

The edition date prints twice on the endorsement. It appears in the top right corner beside COMMERCIAL GENERAL LIABILITY, and again in the bottom left footer next to the ISO copyright line. If a vendor sends you a form number with no edition date, the edition is still on the page they scanned. Ask for the page.

CG 20 37 edition dates compared

What did the 10 01 edition say?

CG 20 37 10 01 is a single short paragraph and it is the broadest edition still in circulation. Verbatim, it amends Section II Who Is An Insured to include "as an insured the person or organization shown in the Schedule, but only with respect to liability arising out of 'your work' at the location designated and described in the schedule of this endorsement performed for that insured and included in the 'products-completed operations hazard'."

Three things about that sentence matter. It says "as an insured" rather than "as an additional insured". It uses "arising out of", which courts have generally read as a loose causal link rather than a fault test. And it contains no cap on limits and no reference to your contract at all. There is also a detail later editions dropped: the 10 01 schedule has an "Additional Premium" line, a reminder that this status was once routinely rated and charged for.

What changed in the 07 04 edition?

The July 2004 edition replaced the trigger. It grants status "only with respect to liability for 'bodily injury' or 'property damage' caused, in whole or in part, by 'your work' at the location designated and described in the schedule of this endorsement performed for that additional insured and included in the 'products-completed operations hazard'."

Two substantive narrowings happened at once. The phrase "caused, in whole or in part, by" replaced "arising out of", which introduces a fault element: the named insured's work has to have contributed to the damage. Under the older wording an additional insured could often reach coverage for its own negligence connected to the work; under this one, that argument gets much harder. Separately, the grant is now expressly limited to bodily injury and property damage. The edition also switched to "as an additional insured" and to the plural "person(s) or organization(s)", and it dropped the Additional Premium line from the schedule.

What did the 04 13 edition add?

April 2013 is the most consequential revision of this form, and it is the one that should change how your contracts are written. The operative grant kept the 07 04 causation test, then added a paragraph beginning "However:" with two conditions, verbatim: "1. The insurance afforded to such additional insured only applies to the extent permitted by law; and 2. If coverage provided to the additional insured is required by a contract or agreement, the insurance afforded to such additional insured will not be broader than that which you are required by the contract or agreement to provide for such additional insured."

It also added an entirely new Paragraph B amending Section III Limits Of Insurance: "If coverage provided to the additional insured is required by a contract or agreement, the most we will pay on behalf of the additional insured is the amount of insurance: 1. Required by the contract or agreement; or 2. Available under the applicable Limits of Insurance shown in the Declarations; whichever is less. This endorsement shall not increase the applicable Limits of Insurance shown in the Declarations."

The practical consequence is that from April 2013 onward, your own insurance requirements clause became the ceiling on your recovery. If your subcontract template asks for $1,000,000 and the subcontractor happens to carry $5,000,000, the endorsement pays the lesser figure. The extra $4,000,000 exists and is simply out of your reach. A stale requirements clause somebody wrote in 2009 and never revisited is now actively costing you coverage, which is a contract drafting problem rather than an insurance problem. If you are trying to keep every one of those contractual obligations mapped to the evidence that actually satisfies it, that is a compliance obligation tracking job rather than a certificate filing job.

One more quiet change: 04 13 was the first edition to modify the Products/Completed Operations Liability Coverage Part as well as the Commercial General Liability Coverage Part. The 10 01 and 07 04 editions list only the CGL part on their face.

What changed in the 12 19 edition?

Less than most people assume, and the one change is easy to miss. Paragraph A of CG 20 37 12 19 is word for word identical to 04 13. The difference is in Paragraph B, where the December 2019 edition deletes the phrase "shown in the Declarations" in both places it appeared. The cap now reads "Available under the applicable limits of insurance", and the closing sentence reads "This endorsement shall not increase the applicable limits of insurance."

Removing that phrase decouples the cap from the Declarations page specifically. Limits that apply by virtue of another endorsement rather than by being printed on the Declarations are within the language as revised. Anyone requiring a per project aggregate under CG 25 03 alongside completed operations status should read the two forms together for that reason.

The December 2019 revision matters for a second reason that has nothing to do with the wording of this form. It introduced CG 20 39 and CG 20 40, the automatic status completed operations endorsements. Before that revision, blanket additional insured wording covered ongoing operations only and completed operations always needed a scheduled CG 20 37. After it, a vendor can satisfy a completed operations requirement with a blanket form, so a packet with no CG 20 37 in it is no longer automatically a gap.

Which CG 20 37 edition should I require?

Requiring a specific edition sounds appealing and usually backfires. Carriers attach the edition their filed program uses, and a subcontractor cannot make an underwriter issue a 2001 form in 2026. A requirement for "CG 20 37 10 01 or equivalent" mostly generates a certificate that says exactly that while a 12 19 form sits in the policy.

The more effective move is to accept the edition you are given and fix the thing the modern editions made decisive, which is your own contract language. Since 04 13 the endorsement pays the lesser of your required amount and the available limits, so raise the required limits in your template to the level you actually want, and state the requirement as a floor rather than a fixed figure. Wording along the lines of "not less than" preserves access to higher limits the vendor happens to carry.

Do I still need CG 20 37 if I have CG 20 10?

Yes, for construction work, unless a blanket completed operations form is present instead. Every edition of CG 20 10 from October 2001 onward covers ongoing operations only, and its Paragraph B expressly excludes damage occurring after all work at the location is complete or after the work is put to its intended use. That exclusion is the completed operations gap in the form's own words, and CG 20 37 is the form ISO created to fill it. Since December 2019, CG 20 39 and CG 20 40 can fill it automatically instead. The CG 20 10 and CG 20 37 comparison covers how the pair works, and the CG 20 10 edition dates follow a parallel history.

How do I check the edition on a certificate?

You usually cannot, and that is the honest answer. An ACORD 25 is issued as a matter of information only. The ADDL INSD column is a checkbox, not evidence, and where a form number appears at all it is typed into the Description of Operations box or onto an attached ACORD 101 by whoever prepared the certificate. Neither carries an edition date reliably.

For vendors where the coverage genuinely matters, ask the agent for the endorsement pages themselves and record two things as data: the form number and the edition date. Reading them as a pair is what lets you tell a vendor on a broad 2001 form from one on a capped 2019 form when both certificates say "CG 20 37". Every additional insured form and what each grants is listed on the additional insured endorsement forms page, and the wider ISO set is on the certificate of insurance endorsements pillar.

The short version

Older CG 20 37 editions are broader and newer ones are tighter, and the turning point is April 2013, when your own contract became the ceiling on what the endorsement pays you. Track the edition date alongside the form number, review the insurance requirements clause in your contract templates against the limits you actually want, and treat a certificate that names a form without an edition as an unanswered question rather than a completed file. Upload a certificate at the top of this page and the AI will pull the endorsement form numbers off it for you.