CG 20 37 is the ISO endorsement that gives a certificate holder additional insured status for completed operations, meaning claims that arrive after the job is finished. It is a separate form from CG 20 10, which stops at ongoing operations, and it cannot be proved by the ADDL INSD checkbox on an ACORD 25. The proof is the endorsement page: the form number, the edition date printed in the bottom corner, and your legal entity in the Schedule. Upload the certificate with its attachments above and COISoftware reads every page and tells you which form you actually hold.
Last updated August 2026
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Construction contracts routinely say "CG 20 37 or equivalent", and since the December 2019 ISO revision that phrase finally has more than one right answer. The table below is drawn from the endorsement forms themselves and from published analysis of the 2019 revision, not from certificate summaries. Read it before you reject a packet that has no literal CG 20 37 in it.
| ISO form | Completed ops? | Scheduled or automatic | Written contract with you? | Pro services excluded? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CG 20 37 | Yes, its whole purpose | Scheduled, your name is typed in | Not required | No exclusion |
| CG 20 39 (12 19) | Yes | Automatic when a written contract requires it | Yes, direct with the insured | Yes, excluded |
| CG 20 40 (12 19) | Yes | Automatic when a written contract requires it | Not required | Yes, excluded |
| CG 20 10 | No, ongoing only | Scheduled | No | No exclusion |
| CG 20 33 | No, ongoing only | Automatic | Yes, direct | No exclusion |
| CG 20 38 | No, ongoing only | Automatic | No | No exclusion |
The professional services column is the trap. If your subcontractor does any design-build or engineering work, a CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 is genuinely narrower than the CG 20 37 your contract asked for, because both 2019 forms exclude bodily injury or property damage arising out of the rendering of, or the failure to render, any professional architectural, engineering or surveying services. CG 20 37 carries no such exclusion. Accepting the substitute is fine for a framing sub and a real reduction in cover for a design-build sub.
The completed operations gap is the most expensive gap in vendor insurance compliance, because it opens exactly when everyone stops paying attention. The work is finished, the file is closed, and the claim shows up two or four years later. Here is why the document most companies rely on will not warn you.
The certificate carries a single ADDL INSD checkbox per policy line. There is no field anywhere on the form that distinguishes ongoing operations from completed operations. A packet with CG 20 10 alone and a packet with CG 20 10 plus CG 20 37 produce an identical looking certificate, so a reviewer working from checkboxes has no way to tell them apart.
CG 20 10 04 13 says the insurance does not apply to bodily injury or property damage occurring after all work on the project has been completed, or after the portion of your work out of which the damage arises has been put to its intended use. That is the mechanical reason a CG 20 10 alone leaves nothing behind. Construction defect claims almost always arrive inside the window that sentence closes.
The Independent Insurance Agents of Texas instruct agents not to check the additional insured box when the policy carries a blanket automatic endorsement, and to describe the endorsement in the Description of Operations box instead. So on a correctly issued certificate backed by CG 20 39 or CG 20 40, the checkbox you were looking for is supposed to be empty. Checkbox-only review rejects correct packets and passes incorrect ones.
Endorsements are renewed, replaced and re-issued on a different schedule than certificates. A vendor verified once at onboarding can quietly move to a carrier proprietary form or drop the completed operations endorsement at the next renewal, and the replacement certificate will look exactly like the one you approved.
None of this is unusual. It is the ordinary result of asking a one page informational summary to prove the contents of a multi page policy, and the certificate says as much itself. The IMPORTANT block on the ACORD 25 (2016/03) reads: if the certificate holder is an ADDITIONAL INSURED, the policy(ies) must have ADDITIONAL INSURED provisions or be endorsed, and a statement on this certificate does not confer rights to the certificate holder in lieu of such endorsement(s). If you want to know what you hold, you have to read the additional insured endorsement itself, and compare it against the CG 20 10 that covers ongoing operations.
COISoftware treats the endorsement pages as the source of truth and the certificate as an index to them. Every attachment in the packet is read, classified by form number and edition, and checked against the requirement you set for that vendor tier.
CG 20 37 is stored as a structured field with its edition date, so 10 01, 07 04, 04 13 and 12 19 are distinguishable rather than all reading as "CG 20 37".
The Schedule columns on CG 20 37 are Name Of Additional Insured Person(s) Or Organization(s) and Location And Description Of Completed Operations. Both are compared against your contracting entity and project.
A packet carrying CG 20 10 with no completed operations form beside it is flagged before the vendor is approved, not after the project closes.
CG 20 39 and CG 20 40 are recognized as completed operations forms rather than rejected as unknown, and the professional services exclusion they carry is surfaced so you can decide.
The endorsement requirement is re-checked each policy term, so a form that quietly disappears at renewal raises a flag instead of passing silently.
When a claim is tendered the carrier asks for the endorsement in force on the date of loss. Each form is stored against the policy term it belongs to, so that request is a lookup.
This is the manual process the software automates. It works the same way whether you run it by hand on one packet or across a few thousand vendors.
The certificate is an index. The endorsement is the evidence. Request copies of every endorsement named in your insurance requirements clause, and treat a packet without them as incomplete rather than as a judgment call.
Tip: Write it into the contract: certificate plus copies of all required endorsements, at every renewal.
CG 20 37 is printed at the top and repeated with its edition date at the foot of the page, for example CG 20 37 04 13 followed by the ISO copyright line. The edition matters: the 04 13 and later editions added a cap that limits your recovery to what your own contract required.
Tip: A CG 20 10 with no CG 20 37, CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 beside it means ongoing operations only.
On a scheduled CG 20 37 your name has to appear in the Schedule, and the Location And Description Of Completed Operations column has to describe the project you care about. A parent company name where a subsidiary signed the contract is a real defect, not a formality.
Tip: If the Schedule is blank, look for wording pulling the names from the Declarations, or for an automatic form instead.
From the 04 13 edition onward the endorsement will not be broader than what your contract required, and pays the lesser of the contract amount and the policy limits. If your requirements clause named a flat number, that number became your ceiling even where the vendor carries far more.
Tip: Draft requirements as limits of not less than, so a vendor carrying $10M is not capped down to your $1M minimum.
Completed operations status is worth the most to the parties who stay exposed long after the invoice is paid.
General contractors carry the clearest exposure. A subcontractor packet with CG 20 10 and nothing else leaves the general contractor with no additional insured status in the years after substantial completion, which is precisely the window in which construction defect litigation arrives. Most states measure that window in years rather than months, so a file closed in good faith at project handover can be reopened long after the compliance team has moved on. Verifying the completed operations form at onboarding costs a few minutes. Discovering it was missing when a defect claim is tendered costs a defense.
Owners and developers sit behind the general contractor and inherit the same problem one layer removed. Their contracts usually require the general contractor to name them for completed operations and to flow the requirement down to every subcontractor. Flow-down is where it breaks. The general contractor holds a clean CG 20 37 naming the owner, and three subcontractors hold CG 20 10 only, so the tier that actually did the defective work has nothing behind it. Reading the packets tier by tier is the only way that surfaces before a loss.
Property managers and facilities teams meet the same form in a smaller frame. A roofing contractor or an elevator servicer creates a completed operations exposure at your building that outlives the work order. This is a different requirement from the tenant lease case, where the correct ISO form is CG 20 11, ADDITIONAL INSURED - MANAGERS OR LESSORS OF PREMISES, and different again from the reseller case, where CG 20 15, ADDITIONAL INSURED - VENDORS, is the form that fits. Asking for CG 20 37 from a party that never performs operations for you is a common and quiet mistake, and it produces packets that cannot be satisfied.
Risk and compliance teams inherit the record keeping, and that is the part that decides whether the coverage is usable. When a claim is tendered the carrier asks for the endorsement in force on the date of loss, not the certificate that was current at onboarding. If your file holds a rolling stack of certificates with no endorsement pages attached to policy terms, answering that question turns into an investigation across brokers who may no longer represent the vendor. Storing each form against its term is what keeps COI verification software useful years later, and it is why we retain the endorsement pages themselves rather than a summary of them.
CG 20 37 is the ISO endorsement titled ADDITIONAL INSURED - OWNERS, LESSEES OR CONTRACTORS - COMPLETED OPERATIONS. It amends Section II, Who Is An Insured, to include the person or organization shown in the Schedule as an additional insured for bodily injury or property damage caused, in whole or in part, by your work at the scheduled location and included in the products-completed operations hazard. In plain terms, it extends additional insured status to claims that arrive after the job is finished.
CG 20 10 covers the additional insured for ongoing operations, while the work is being performed. CG 20 37 covers the same party for completed operations, after the work is done and put to use. They are separate endorsements and one does not include the other, so a contract that wants coverage through the defect window has to name both. This split dates to the 10 01 edition, when CG 20 10 was narrowed to ongoing operations and CG 20 37 was created to carry the rest.
Since the December 2019 ISO revision, three forms reach completed operations: CG 20 37 itself, CG 20 39 and CG 20 40. CG 20 39 grants automatic status where you have a direct written contract with the named insured, and CG 20 40 grants it without requiring that privity. Both 2019 forms exclude professional architectural, engineering and surveying services, which CG 20 37 does not, so they are close equivalents for trade work and genuinely narrower for design-build work.
No. The ACORD 25 carries a single ADDL INSD checkbox per policy line and no field that separates ongoing operations from completed operations. A packet with CG 20 10 alone looks identical to a packet with both forms. The only reliable evidence is the endorsement page itself, showing the form number, the edition date and your entity in the Schedule.
Four editions are still in circulation: 10 01, 07 04, 04 13 and 12 19. The 07 04 edition added the phrase "caused, in whole or in part, by" your work. The 04 13 edition added that coverage applies only to the extent permitted by law, capped the grant so it is not broader than your contract required, and capped the limit at the lesser of the contract amount and the policy limits. The 12 19 edition carried those changes forward.
It means the additional insured is covered for claims arising from work that is already finished, which fall inside what the policy calls the products-completed operations hazard. This is the coverage that matters for construction defect claims, because those are discovered after handover. Without a completed operations form, the additional insured grant ends when the work ends.
CG 20 37 is a scheduled form, so the additional insured is typed into the Schedule. What people usually mean by a blanket CG 20 37 is either the same form with broad wording entered in the Schedule, or one of the automatic forms, CG 20 39 or CG 20 40. Worth knowing: a Big I panel in March 2024 advised agents to avoid the word blanket entirely and write "an additional insured as per the attached endorsement" instead.
It is not required by law. It is required when your contract says so, and most well-drafted US construction and vendor agreements do require it, because the exposure they care about outlives the work. If your insurance requirements clause names only additional insured status without saying completed operations, you will typically receive CG 20 10 alone and have no grounds to object.
Yes, from the 04 13 edition onward. The endorsement pays the lesser of the amount your contract required and the limits available under the Declarations, and states that it shall not increase the applicable limits. If you required $1 million from a vendor carrying $10 million, your recovery as an additional insured is capped at $1 million. Drafting the clause as "limits of not less than" avoids that.
It depends on the carrier and the form. Scheduled endorsements are often issued for a modest additional premium, and CG 20 11, the managers or lessors form, even carries an Additional Premium line in its Schedule. Automatic and blanket forms are usually built into the policy for contractors who need them routinely. Cost is rarely the reason a completed operations form is missing. It is usually that nobody asked for it by name.
The endorsement lasts as long as the policy term it sits on, so the practical answer is that coverage depends on the policy in force when the damage occurs, not the one in force when the work was done. That is why occurrence-based general liability matters here, and why keeping the endorsement page for each renewal term is what makes the coverage provable years later.
Read it rather than accept or reject it on the form number. Many carriers issue proprietary additional insured forms that are broader or narrower than the ISO equivalents, and the only way to know is the grant language. Check three things: whether it reaches the products-completed operations hazard, whether your entity is identified, and whether the limit is capped by your own contract wording.
The ongoing operations counterpart, and the exclusion that ends its coverage.
The full CG 20 series, which form fits which relationship.
What the words in the Description of Operations box actually prove.
Why a correctly issued blanket packet leaves the checkboxes blank.
Track subcontractor certificates and endorsements per project.
Verify certificates and endorsement pages together, at vendor scale.
How to draft the clause that gets you the right endorsements.
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