CG 22 94 and CG 22 95: The Subcontractor Work Exclusion

Last updated August 2026.

CG 22 94 and CG 22 95 are ISO endorsements that delete the subcontractor exception to the damage-to-your-work exclusion in a commercial general liability policy. Without that exception, property damage to a contractor's completed work is excluded even when a subcontractor caused it, which removes most construction defect coverage. CG 22 94 applies across the whole policy. CG 22 95 applies only to the sites or operations listed on it.

If you collect certificates of insurance from contractors, these two form numbers are worth memorizing. They are short, they look like every other endorsement number typed into the Description of Operations box, and they quietly take away the exact coverage most construction contracts are written to secure. A certificate can show perfect limits, current dates and every additional insured form you asked for, and still be attached to a policy that will not pay for defective subcontractor work.

What the damage to your work exclusion actually says

Exclusion (l) in the standard CGL coverage form, CG 00 01, is titled "Damage To Your Work." It excludes property damage to "your work" arising out of it or any part of it, and included in the products-completed operations hazard. In plain terms, the policy is liability insurance, not a warranty on your own workmanship. If the roof you installed leaks and the only damage is to the roof, that is your problem to fix.

Then comes the sentence that matters. The exclusion does not apply "if the damaged work or the work out of which the damage arises was performed on your behalf by a subcontractor." That is the subcontractor exception, and it is the single reason a general contractor's CGL policy responds to construction defect claims at all. A GC who self-performs nothing and subcontracts everything gets its completed work back inside coverage through that one sentence.

Take the exception away and a general contractor is left with a policy that excludes damage to the building it built. That is what these two endorsements do.

What CG 22 94 does

CG 22 94 is titled "Exclusion, Damage To Work Performed By Subcontractors On Your Behalf." Edition dates in circulation include 10 01 and 04 13. It amends exclusion (l) so that property damage to any part of "your work" is excluded if the damage arises out of any part of "your work," including work performed by subcontractors. The subcontractor exception is gone across the entire policy, on every project, for the whole term.

For a contractor who subcontracts most of the work, this is close to eliminating completed operations coverage for defect claims. The policy still responds to bodily injury and to damage to property other than the insured's own work, so a defective installation that floods a tenant's inventory is still a claim. But the cost of tearing out and replacing the defective work itself, which is what most construction defect suits are actually about, sits outside the policy.

What CG 22 95 does

CG 22 95 is titled "Exclusion, Damage To Work Performed By Subcontractors On Your Behalf, Designated Sites Or Operations," edition 10 01. It does exactly the same thing to exclusion (l), but only for the projects, sites or operations listed in its schedule. Everything not on the schedule keeps the subcontractor exception.

Underwriters use it as a middle path. Rather than declining a contractor outright or excluding subcontractor work everywhere, they carve out the one high-risk job: the residential condo conversion, the wood-frame podium project, the job in a jurisdiction with aggressive defect litigation. From a certificate reviewer's point of view CG 22 95 is more dangerous than CG 22 94, because the schedule is on the endorsement and not on the certificate. The form number alone does not tell you whether your project is the one that got carved out.

CG 22 94 vs CG 22 95

What is the subcontractor exception to the your work exclusion?

The subcontractor exception is the sentence at the end of the damage-to-your-work exclusion that puts coverage back when a subcontractor performed either the damaged work or the work that caused the damage. It appeared in the 1986 CGL revision and is the mechanism by which general contractors get completed operations coverage for construction defects. Courts in most states treat defective subcontractor work that damages other work as an occurrence because of it.

Does a CGL policy cover construction defects?

Partly, and only through the subcontractor exception. A CGL policy does not cover the cost of doing your own work correctly, and it never has. What it can cover is property damage caused by defective work performed by a subcontractor, including the cost of accessing and repairing the resulting damage. Delete the subcontractor exception with CG 22 94 or CG 22 95 and even that narrow grant disappears, which is why these forms show up in coverage litigation so often.

Where these endorsements show up on a certificate of insurance

Almost always in the Description of Operations box on the ACORD 25, or on an attached ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule when the list of forms runs long. They sit in the same block of text as the forms you asked for, formatted identically, and nothing marks them as restrictive:

RE: Project 4471. CG 20 10 04 13, CG 20 37 04 13, CG 20 01 04 13, CG 24 04 05 09, CG 22 94 04 13 attached.

A reviewer checking that the required additional insured and waiver forms are present will tick all four boxes and approve the vendor. The fifth number is the one that matters, and it is the one nobody was looking for. Spelling varies too: you will see CG2294, CG 2294 and CG 22 94 04 13 for the same form, which is why a text search for one spelling misses the others.

Two related restrictive forms belong on the same watch list. CG 21 39, Contractual Liability Limitation, removes paragraph f from the definition of an insured contract, which is the paragraph that insures the indemnity obligations a subcontractor assumes in your subcontract. CG 21 44, Limitation Of Coverage To Designated Premises Or Project, narrows the entire policy to whatever is listed on the form, so work anywhere else is simply outside it. All four are covered in the reference table on our certificate of insurance endorsements page.

What should I do if a subcontractor's certificate shows CG 22 94?

Ask for a copy of the endorsement before anyone mobilizes, and read the schedule if it is CG 22 95. Then you have three realistic options, and which one you pick depends on how much of the work that sub is doing.

1. Ask the sub to get it removed. Sometimes it was attached at a renewal the insured never read, and an agent can request it be taken off, occasionally for additional premium. This works more often than people expect on smaller trades with clean loss histories.
2. Move the risk somewhere else. A subcontractor default insurance program, a higher retainage, a longer warranty backed by a bond, or an owner-controlled wrap can absorb some of what the exclusion drops. Our guide to wrap-up insurance, OCIP and CCIP covers the wrap option in detail.
3. Accept it knowingly and price it. On a small scope with little defect exposure, this may be the right commercial answer. The failure mode is not accepting the exclusion, it is accepting it without knowing it was there.

What you should not do is treat the certificate as evidence either way. An ACORD 25 is issued as a matter of information only. The form numbers on it are a statement by whoever filled it in, and neither their presence nor their absence proves what is attached to the policy. The insurance requirements themselves also need to live in the signed subcontract or in the purchase order that awards the work, because blanket endorsements key off a written agreement and grant nothing when there is not one.

How to catch these at scale

Reviewing endorsement numbers by hand works until roughly the fiftieth vendor. After that, the checks that get skipped are the ones nobody is explicitly looking for, and a restrictive endorsement is by definition not on your requirements list. Three habits help:

• Keep a named exclusion watch list, not just a required-forms list. CG 22 94, CG 22 95, CG 21 39 and CG 21 44 should be findings that stop a review, in the same way a short limit does.
• Search for the no-space spellings too. CG2294 and CG2295 appear on certificates as often as the spaced versions.
• Collect the endorsement itself for your top vendors. For anyone whose defective work could cost you seven figures, the form number on the certificate is not enough. Get the endorsement, check the schedule, and file it with the certificate.

Software helps here mainly because it never gets bored. COISoftware reads the Description of Operations text and any attached remarks schedule, pulls the endorsement numbers out as data rather than free text, and flags the restrictive ones as findings instead of letting them pass because the limits happened to be right. If you are setting up requirements for a construction program, subcontractor COI tracking covers the whole workflow, and subcontractor certificate of insurance requirements covers what to ask for in the first place.

The short version

The subcontractor exception is what makes a general contractor's CGL policy respond to construction defect claims. CG 22 94 deletes it everywhere. CG 22 95 deletes it on scheduled jobs. Both are easy to miss because they look like every other form number on a certificate, and both are worth catching before a subcontractor is on site rather than three years later when a coverage lawyer explains them to you.