How to Read a Certificate of Insurance: ACORD 25 Explained

Last updated July 2026.

To read a certificate of insurance, work top to bottom on the ACORD 25 form: check the producer and insured names, confirm each coverage line (general liability, auto, umbrella, workers compensation) shows active policy numbers with effective and expiration dates that cover your work period, verify the limits meet your contract, and confirm your organization is listed as certificate holder and, where required, as additional insured. Anything expired, missing or below your minimum is a red flag.

A certificate of insurance, almost always an ACORD 25 form, is a one page snapshot of a vendor policies on the day it was issued. It is the single document that tells you whether the contractor about to work on your property actually carries the coverage your contract demands. Most people glance at it, see the word insurance and file it. Reading it properly takes about two minutes once you know what each block means, and it is the difference between real protection and a piece of paper.

How do you read a certificate of insurance?

Read a certificate of insurance in five passes: confirm the named insured matches the company you hired, confirm each required coverage is present, confirm the policy dates cover your entire work period, confirm the limits meet or beat your contract minimums, and confirm you appear as certificate holder and additional insured where the contract requires it. If all five pass, the certificate is doing its job. If any fail, you have a gap to close before work starts.

The form looks dense because it packs several policies onto one page, but the layout is fixed. Every ACORD 25 puts the same information in the same place, so once you learn the blocks you can read any certificate from any agent in the country the same way.

What are the boxes on an ACORD 25 certificate of insurance?

The ACORD 25 is divided into fixed blocks: the producer (the insurance agency that issued it), the insured (your vendor), a row of insurers with letter codes A through F, and the coverage grid. The grid lists each policy type down the left, with its policy number, effective date, expiration date and limits across each row. Below the grid sit the description of operations box, the certificate holder box and the authorized representative signature.

The letter codes matter. Each coverage line references an insurer letter, which ties that policy to a specific carrier and its NAIC number in the insurers list. That is how you confirm the general liability and the workers compensation are actually written by rated carriers, not a name someone typed in.

What is the producer box on a certificate of insurance?

The producer box in the top left names the insurance agency or broker that prepared the certificate, with a contact name, phone and email. It is your verification lifeline. If a certificate looks altered, or a coverage seems too good to be true, you call the producer listed there and ask them to confirm the policy is in force. A real producer will verify it. A fabricated certificate often lists a producer that does not exist or will not confirm the policy.

What do the coverage limits on a COI mean?

Limits are the maximum the insurer will pay, and they appear on the right of each coverage row. On general liability you will see each occurrence, general aggregate, products and completed operations aggregate, and personal and advertising injury, commonly 1,000,000 per occurrence and 2,000,000 aggregate. Compare each number against your contract minimum. A vendor can carry general liability and still fail your requirement if the limit is 500,000 and your contract demands a million.

Do not stop at the general liability line. Check auto liability, umbrella or excess limits, and workers compensation, which shows statutory limits plus employers liability. A missing workers compensation line on a vendor with employees is one of the most expensive gaps to miss, because an uninsured injured worker can be reclassified onto your own policy in an audit.

What does additional insured mean on a certificate of insurance?

Additional insured status extends the vendor policy to cover your organization for claims arising out of the vendor work. Being listed as certificate holder only means you received the certificate; it grants you no coverage. To actually be protected, you must be named as an additional insured, and the certificate should reference the endorsement form that grants it, often a blanket endorsement like CG 20 10 or CG 20 37. The difference is covered in depth in additional insured vs certificate holder.

The description of operations box usually spells out who is additional insured and on what basis. If your contract requires additional insured status and that box is blank, the certificate does not prove what you need, no matter how healthy the limits look.

What is a waiver of subrogation on a COI?

A waiver of subrogation is a clause that stops the vendor insurer from later coming after you to recover money it paid on a claim. When your contract requires one, the certificate should note it, usually in the description of operations box and tied to an endorsement. It is a routine risk transfer requirement, and it has its own quirks, so it is worth understanding on its own in waiver of subrogation on a certificate of insurance.

How do you know if a certificate of insurance is valid?

A certificate is valid when every required coverage shows a policy number and an expiration date that falls after your work ends, the limits meet your contract, and the named insured is the company you actually hired. The most common failure is not fraud, it is timing: a certificate that was accurate in January expires in June while the project runs through August. Always read the expiration dates against your schedule, not against today.

How do you verify a certificate of insurance is real?

To verify a certificate is genuine, contact the producer listed on the form and ask them to confirm the policies are in force, or ask the vendor to have their agent send the certificate directly to you. Certificates are easy to alter in a PDF editor, so a limit or date that looks off is worth a phone call. The full process, including the red flags that signal a forged certificate, is in how to verify a certificate of insurance and can a certificate of insurance be fake.

Reading certificates at scale

Reading one certificate takes two minutes. Reading two hundred, tracking every expiration date, and chasing renewals before they lapse is a full time job done by hand. This is the same problem faced by any team that has to pull structured data out of a stack of documents, and it is why AI document data extraction has taken over the work that used to mean squinting at PDFs. For certificates specifically, certificate of insurance verification software reads every ACORD 25 the moment it arrives, pulls the insurer, limits, dates and additional insured status, checks them against your rules, and flags anything short before it becomes your problem.

If certificates currently live in an inbox and a spreadsheet, the case for automating the reading and the chasing is laid out in manual COI tracking vs software. You can also upload one of your own certificates at the top of this page and watch the extraction happen, which is the fastest way to see what reading a COI looks like when software does it.

The bottom line

Reading a certificate of insurance is a fixed, learnable routine: names, coverages, dates, limits, additional insured and waiver status. Do all six checks, every time, and read the dates against your actual project window rather than today. When the volume outgrows a manual read, a COI tracking system does the same checks automatically and never forgets an expiration date.