An endorsement is a form attached to a policy that changes what the policy covers. On a certificate of insurance, endorsements are usually named only by ISO form number, in the Description of Operations box or on an attached ACORD 101, and the certificate itself grants nothing. This page lists the endorsement forms you will actually see, states in one line what each one does, and flags the four that take coverage away rather than add it. Upload a certificate above and the AI reads the form numbers off the page for you.
Last updated August 2026
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The general liability endorsement forms that appear most often on an ACORD 25 or its attached ACORD 101, with what each one does. Forms marked as restrictive reduce coverage, so treat them as findings and not as evidence of compliance.
| Form | Official ISO title | What it does | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| CG 20 10 | Additional Insured, Owners, Lessees or Contractors, Scheduled Person Or Organization | Adds a named party as additional insured for the named insured's ongoing operations. Editions from 10 01 onward cover ongoing operations only, which is why it is normally paired with CG 20 37. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 37 | Additional Insured, Owners, Lessees or Contractors, Completed Operations | Extends additional insured status into the products-completed operations hazard, so the party stays covered after the job is finished. This is the one most often missing. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 33 | Additional Insured, Owners, Lessees or Contractors, Automatic Status When Required In Construction Agreement With You | Blanket additional insured status for anyone the named insured has a direct written construction agreement with. No schedule to fill in, but it reaches only the party in direct contract. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 38 | Additional Insured, Owners, Lessees or Contractors, Automatic Status For Other Parties When Required In Written Construction Agreement | The same blanket idea, extended to upstream parties the contract requires, such as the owner above your general contractor. This is what an owner usually needs from a sub. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 26 | Additional Insured, Designated Person Or Organization | General purpose additional insured form for relationships that are not construction contracts, such as a service agreement or a permit condition. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 11 | Additional Insured, Managers Or Lessors Of Premises | Adds a landlord or property manager as additional insured for liability arising out of the leased premises. Standard on a commercial tenant's certificate. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 28 | Additional Insured, Lessor Of Leased Equipment | Adds the equipment owner as additional insured while the equipment is leased. Standard on a rental house or crane lessor's certificate. | Adds coverage |
| CG 20 01 | Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition | Makes the named insured's policy pay first and stops it from demanding contribution from your policy. Without it, an additional insured endorsement alone can still leave your carrier sharing the loss. | Adds coverage |
| CG 24 04 | Waiver Of Transfer Of Rights Of Recovery Against Others To Us | The general liability waiver of subrogation. Gives up the carrier's right to come after you after it pays a claim. The December 2019 revision also conditions the waiver on the insured having waived its own claims before the loss. | Adds coverage |
| CG 25 03 | Designated Construction Project(s) General Aggregate Limit | Gives each listed construction project its own general aggregate, so one bad project does not exhaust the limit protecting yours. | Adds coverage |
| CG 25 04 | Designated Location(s) General Aggregate Limit | The same idea applied to locations rather than construction projects. Used for premises risks such as stores, branches or facilities. | Adds coverage |
| CG 22 94 | Exclusion, Damage To Work Performed By Subcontractors On Your Behalf | Removes the subcontractor exception to the damage-to-your-work exclusion across the whole policy. Guts construction defect coverage for work done by subs. Editions 10 01 and 04 13. | Restricts coverage |
| CG 22 95 | Exclusion, Damage To Work Performed By Subcontractors On Your Behalf, Designated Sites Or Operations | The same exclusion applied only to the projects or sites listed in its schedule, so it can be attached to one job and not the rest. | Restricts coverage |
| CG 21 39 | Contractual Liability Limitation | Strips blanket contractual liability by removing paragraph f from the definition of insured contract, leaving only a short list such as leases, sidetrack agreements and easements. The indemnity clause in your contract may become uninsured. | Restricts coverage |
| CG 21 44 | Limitation Of Coverage To Designated Premises Or Project | Narrows the whole policy to the premises or project listed on the form. Work anywhere else is outside the policy. | Restricts coverage |
Form titles and behavior above follow the standard ISO commercial general liability forms. Edition dates matter: a CG 20 10 from 1985 covered completed operations, and every edition from October 2001 onward does not. Always read the edition date printed after the form number, and get the endorsement itself rather than accepting the number on a certificate as proof it is attached.
Limits and expiration dates are easy to check. Endorsements are where the coverage you negotiated either exists or quietly does not, and a certificate is not designed to tell you which.
An ACORD 25 is a snapshot issued for information only. Typing "CG 20 10, CG 20 37, CG 20 01" into the Description of Operations box does not attach those forms to the policy. Anyone can type a form number. The only proof is a copy of the endorsement itself, and most certificate reviews never ask for one.
A CG 20 10 11 85 covered ongoing and completed operations. Every edition from 10 01 forward covers ongoing operations only. Two certificates can both say CG 20 10 and mean two different things, and the difference only shows up years later when a completed operations claim arrives.
CG 22 94, CG 22 95, CG 21 39 and CG 21 44 sit in the same Description of Operations text as the forms you asked for. They read like any other form number, and they take away exactly the coverage your contract was written to secure. Nothing on the certificate labels them as bad news.
CG 20 33 and CG 20 38 grant status only where a written agreement requires it. If the subcontract is silent, or names the wrong entity, the blanket form grants nothing. The certificate looks perfect and the coverage is not there.
This is why endorsement review is a document problem before it is an insurance problem. Somebody has to read the form numbers off every certificate, compare them against what the contract required, and notice the ones that should not be there. Doing that by hand across a few hundred vendors is where certificate programs fall apart. How to read a certificate of insurance walks the ACORD 25 box by box, and the ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule is where the endorsement list usually continues when it runs out of room.
COISoftware reads the form numbers out of the Description of Operations box and any attached ACORD 101, checks them against the endorsements your contract requires, and tells you what is missing or what should not be there.
The AI reads the Description of Operations text and attached remarks schedules and pulls out the endorsement form numbers as data, including messy spellings like CG2010, CG 20 10 04 13 and "CG 20 10 and CG 20 37 attached".
Set the endorsements each vendor tier owes you once. Ask general contractors for CG 20 10 plus CG 20 37 plus CG 20 01, ask a tenant for CG 20 11, and every certificate is checked against the right list instead of a mental one.
CG 22 94, CG 22 95, CG 21 39 and CG 21 44 are treated as findings. If one shows up on a subcontractor's certificate, it lands in front of a human instead of passing review because the limits happened to be right.
Where the edition date is printed with the form number it is captured with it, so a 11 85 CG 20 10 does not get silently treated as equivalent to a current one.
Attach the endorsement copy to the vendor record when the agent sends it, so the proof lives next to the certificate that claimed it rather than in somebody's inbox.
Every certificate comes back compliant, expiring or non-compliant with the specific reason, including which endorsement was missing. That is the record you want when a claim gets denied two years later.
Endorsement review matters most where a contract shifts risk. Subcontractor COI tracking is the heaviest case, because additional insured, waiver and completed operations requirements all stack there. General contractors face it per project, commercial real estate teams face it on every tenant lease, and vendor insurance compliance software is the general purpose page for everything else.
Four steps that catch almost everything a manual limits-and-dates check misses.
This is where endorsement form numbers live. If the box says "see attached", the ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule is part of the certificate and you need it. A certificate delivered without its referenced attachment is incomplete.
Tip: If the box is empty and your contract required additional insured status, the review is already failed.
Ongoing operations and completed operations are two separate forms. Additional insured status and primary and noncontributory are two separate forms. A waiver of subrogation is a third. Requiring "additional insured" in a contract and accepting one CG 20 10 gets you roughly a third of what you asked for.
Scan for CG 22 94, CG 22 95, CG 21 39 and CG 21 44. Any of them on a construction subcontractor's certificate is worth a conversation before the sub mobilizes, because each one removes coverage your contract assumed was there.
For your highest risk vendors, do not accept the form number as proof. Ask the agent for a copy of the endorsement, check that the named entity matches the entity in your contract exactly, and file it with the certificate.
Tip: Entity names are the quiet failure. "ABC Properties LLC" is not "ABC Property Management LLC" when a carrier is reading it.
Short answers to the comparisons contract administrators look up mid-review, each linking to the full explanation.
CG 20 10 covers the additional insured during ongoing operations. CG 20 37 covers them after the work is complete, inside the products-completed operations hazard. Since the October 2001 edition they are two separate grants, so requiring only CG 20 10 leaves you unprotected for the defect that shows up after the job closes out. The full CG 20 10 vs CG 20 37 comparison covers the edition history.
Both are blanket additional insured forms that trigger on a written construction agreement instead of a schedule. CG 20 33 reaches only the party the named insured contracted with directly. CG 20 38 also reaches other parties the agreement requires, which is how an owner gets status from a second-tier sub. See the blanket additional insured comparison.
Both split the general aggregate so one loss cannot consume the whole limit. CG 25 03 does it per designated construction project, CG 25 04 per designated location. A general contractor requiring a per-project aggregate wants CG 25 03; a landlord with several buildings usually wants CG 25 04. The per project aggregate endorsement explained goes deeper.
They solve different problems. Additional insured status gives you a defense and coverage under the vendor's policy. A waiver of subrogation under CG 24 04 stops the vendor's carrier from recovering from you after it pays. Contracts routinely require both, and one does not imply the other. Waiver of subrogation on a certificate of insurance and blanket waivers of subrogation cover the detail, including the December 2019 CG 24 04 change.
Additional insured status alone can still leave your own carrier contributing to a loss. CG 20 01 changes the other insurance condition so the vendor's policy responds first and does not seek contribution from yours. Primary and noncontributory explained.
Being listed in the Certificate Holder box grants nothing at all. It means a copy of the certificate was sent to you. Coverage comes only from an additional insured endorsement attached to the policy. The difference between an additional insured and a certificate holder is the single most expensive misunderstanding in certificate review.
An endorsement is a form attached to an insurance policy that changes what the policy covers. On a certificate of insurance it usually appears only as an ISO form number, such as CG 20 10 or CG 24 04, typed into the Description of Operations box or listed on an attached ACORD 101. The certificate reports that the endorsement exists. It does not create it, and it is not proof the form is actually attached to the policy.
CG 20 10 adds a party as additional insured for the named insured's ongoing operations. CG 20 37 adds them for completed operations, meaning claims that arise after the work is finished. Editions of CG 20 10 from October 2001 onward no longer include completed operations, so the two forms are normally required together. Accepting only CG 20 10 leaves a gap for construction defect claims that surface after closeout.
CG 25 03 is the Designated Construction Project(s) General Aggregate Limit endorsement. It gives each construction project listed on the form its own separate general aggregate limit, so a large loss on one project cannot exhaust the aggregate protecting yours. Owners and general contractors commonly require it from subcontractors who work on many projects at once with a single shared aggregate.
Both create a separate general aggregate limit, but they apply it differently. CG 25 03 applies a separate aggregate per designated construction project. CG 25 04 applies one per designated location, which suits premises risks like retail stores, branches or facilities rather than construction jobs. Require CG 25 03 for project work and CG 25 04 where the exposure is tied to a place.
A blanket additional insured endorsement grants status automatically to anyone a written agreement requires, with no schedule to fill in. CG 20 33 does this for parties in direct contract with the named insured, and CG 20 38 extends it to other parties the agreement requires, such as an owner above your general contractor. The catch is that blanket wording grants nothing if the contract is silent or names the wrong entity.
For construction work the usual set is CG 20 10 for ongoing operations, CG 20 37 for completed operations, CG 20 01 for primary and noncontributory, and CG 24 04 for waiver of subrogation, with CG 25 03 added where you want a per project aggregate. Blanket forms CG 20 33 and CG 20 38 can replace the scheduled additional insured forms if your subcontract clearly requires the status.
CG 22 94 is the Exclusion, Damage To Work Performed By Subcontractors On Your Behalf endorsement. It removes the subcontractor exception to the damage-to-your-work exclusion, so property damage to the insured's completed work is excluded even when a subcontractor caused it. On a general contractor's policy it removes most construction defect coverage. CG 22 95 does the same thing but only for the sites or operations listed on it.
CG 21 39 is the Contractual Liability Limitation endorsement. It removes paragraph f from the policy definition of an insured contract, which is the paragraph that provides blanket coverage for indemnity obligations assumed in contracts. What is left is a short list including leases, sidetrack agreements, easements and municipal indemnity obligations. If it is on a vendor's policy, the indemnity clause in your contract may not be insured.
No. An ACORD 25 is issued as a matter of information only and confers no rights. A form number typed into the Description of Operations box is a statement by the person who issued the certificate, not evidence from the carrier. For vendors where the coverage genuinely matters, ask the agent for a copy of the endorsement and confirm the named entity matches your contracting entity exactly.
Because the same form number has meant different things over time. The 11 85 edition of CG 20 10 covered both ongoing and completed operations. Editions from 10 01 onward cover ongoing operations only. A certificate that lists CG 20 10 without an edition date leaves you unable to tell which grant you received, so record the edition date printed after the form number whenever it appears.
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