A primary and noncontributory endorsement makes your vendor's policy pay first and gives up its right to ask your insurer to share the loss. On general liability the ISO form is CG 20 01. On commercial auto it is CA 04 49. Both switch on only when two conditions are met, and neither condition is visible anywhere on an ACORD 25 certificate.
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The forms that actually create primary and noncontributory status. The CG 20 01 and CA 04 49 wording below was transcribed from the published ISO form and from an issued policy packet filed with a municipal contract, so the coverage parts and conditions are quoted rather than summarized.
| Form | Coverage line | Official title | What it modifies |
|---|---|---|---|
| CG 20 01 04 13 | General liability | Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition | The Commercial General Liability and Products/Completed Operations Liability Coverage Parts. The first ISO endorsement written for this purpose |
| CG 20 01 12 19 | General liability | Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition | The same two coverage parts plus the Liquor Liability Coverage Part. The operative wording is unchanged from 04 13 |
| CA 04 49 11 16 | Commercial auto | Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition | The Business Auto (CA 00 01), Auto Dealers (CA 00 25) and Motor Carrier (CA 00 20) Coverage Forms |
| CG 20 10 and CG 20 37 | General liability | Additional Insured, Owners, Lessees or Contractors | Who counts as an insured. Neither form says anything about which policy pays first, which is the reason CG 20 01 exists |
| CG 00 01 Section IV | General liability | Other Insurance condition in the coverage form itself | Nothing. This is the default the endorsement overrides. Left alone, the insurer keeps its right to seek contribution |
| Workers compensation | Workers compensation | No ISO primary and noncontributory endorsement | Nothing. Comp is statutory and pays regardless, so a contract clause demanding it on this line is normally satisfied by a waiver of subrogation instead |
Contracts name three things together: additional insured, waiver of subrogation, and primary and noncontributory. The certificate can evidence the first two. It has no way to evidence the third.
The certificate grid carries exactly two endorsement checkboxes: ADDL INSR and SUBR WVD. There is no third column for primary and noncontributory. It can only appear as free text somebody typed into the Description of Operations box, and plenty of certificates never mention it at all. A reviewer checking boxes will pass a vendor who never bought the form.
Condition two of CG 20 01 requires that the named insured agreed in writing that this insurance would be primary and would not seek contribution. If the subcontract or lease is silent, the endorsement can sit on the policy and do nothing. The vendor paid for it, you accepted it, and it still does not respond.
The wording only gives up contribution against other insurance under which you are a Named Insured. If your protection on another policy comes from being an additional insured rather than a named insured, that policy is outside the promise. This is the condition almost nobody reads, and it is the one carriers argue at claim time.
Being added to a vendor's policy tells you nothing about payment order. From the 04 13 revision onward the CG 20 series carries no primary and noncontributory language of its own. Requiring CG 20 10 and assuming the rest follows is the single most common gap on a construction certificate.
COISoftware pulls form numbers and edition dates off the endorsement pages behind the certificate, checks them against what your contract requires for that vendor, and tells you which coverage lines are genuinely primary and noncontributory.
The form number is captured from the endorsement page rather than inferred from wording typed into the Description of Operations box. A certificate that only claims primary and noncontributory, with no form behind it, is flagged as unproven instead of accepted.
CG 20 01 04 13 and CG 20 01 12 19 are not interchangeable if liquor liability matters to you. Both halves of the number are captured, so you can pull every vendor sitting on the older edition without reopening a single PDF.
CG 20 01 does nothing for commercial auto. The auto policy needs CA 04 49. Each coverage line is evaluated against its own requirement, so a general liability endorsement is never counted as satisfying an auto requirement.
Because there is no checkbox for this requirement, the claim usually hides in free text at the bottom of the certificate. That block is read as language, not skipped as unstructured filler, so a typed primary and noncontributory statement is captured and matched to the endorsement behind it.
Record the requirement once per contract type. If your master agreement calls for primary and noncontributory on general liability and auto and the packet contains only CG 20 01, the vendor is flagged short on the auto line while you can still do something about it.
Endorsements get dropped at renewal without anyone downstream being told. Every renewal packet is compared against the prior year, so a CG 20 01 that quietly disappears surfaces as an exception rather than as a discovery during a claim.
Five checks, in the order that finds problems fastest.
There is no box to tick for this. ADDL INSR and SUBR WVD are the only endorsement columns on an ACORD 25. Whatever the certificate says about primary and noncontributory is either free text in the Description of Operations box or nothing at all, and neither is evidence.
Request CG 20 01 for general liability and CA 04 49 for commercial auto by name. Naming the form is what gets it produced. A request that only says please confirm primary and noncontributory tends to come back as another certificate with another sentence typed at the bottom.
The number prints in the top right corner of the endorsement and again in the footer beside the ISO copyright line. Confirm you are looking at CG 20 01 rather than a carrier manuscript form with a similar name, and note whether the edition is 04 13 or 12 19.
Condition two only engages if the vendor agreed in writing that its insurance would be primary and would not seek contribution. Pull the insurance requirements clause and confirm it says that in those terms. A clause that only requires additional insured status does not trigger the endorsement.
A CG 20 01 on the liability policy leaves the auto policy alone. If your contract requires primary and noncontributory on commercial auto, look for CA 04 49 on the auto policy specifically, and expect to have to ask twice.
Most pages about this endorsement paraphrase it. Below is what the forms say, transcribed from the published ISO form and from an issued policy packet, so you can compare the editions yourself.
Transcribed from the form published in the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas form library. It is titled Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition, and it modifies the Commercial General Liability Coverage Part and the Products/Completed Operations Liability Coverage Part. The operative paragraph is added to the Other Insurance Condition and supersedes any provision to the contrary:
Primary And Noncontributory Insurance. This insurance is primary to and will not seek contribution from any other insurance available to an additional insured under your policy provided that: (1) The additional insured is a Named Insured under such other insurance; and (2) You have agreed in writing in a contract or agreement that this insurance would be primary and would not seek contribution from any other insurance available to the additional insured.
Two conditions, joined by the word and. Both have to be true before the insurer gives anything up. Before this form existed in the April 2013 revision, buyers relied on manuscript endorsements or on the Other Insurance condition in the coverage form itself, which is exactly what CG 20 01 was written to override.
Transcribed from an issued general liability endorsement filed with a municipal contract. The 12 19 edition carries the ISO 2018 copyright and modifies three coverage parts instead of two: Commercial General Liability, Liquor Liability, and Products/Completed Operations Liability. The Liquor Liability Coverage Part is the addition.
The operative paragraph is otherwise identical to 04 13, word for word, including both conditions. That is worth stating plainly because the December 2019 revision changed several other endorsements substantively, and it is easy to assume this one moved with them. It did not. If liquor liability is not part of your vendor's exposure, the two editions behave the same way.
Transcribed from an issued commercial auto endorsement in the same packet. It modifies the Auto Dealers Coverage Form, the Business Auto Coverage Form and the Motor Carrier Coverage Form, and it is split into two paragraphs. Paragraph A applies to the Business Auto and Motor Carrier forms:
This Coverage Form's Covered Autos Liability Coverage is primary to and will not seek contribution from any other insurance available to an "insured" under your policy provided that: 1. Such "insured" is a Named Insured under such other insurance; and 2. You have agreed in writing in a contract or agreement that this insurance would be primary and would not seek contribution from any other insurance available to such "insured".
Paragraph B does the same job for the Auto Dealers Coverage Form and extends it to that form's General Liability Coverages as well. Note the wording change between the lines: CG 20 01 speaks about an additional insured, while CA 04 49 speaks about an "insured" as that term is defined in the auto form. The auto form reaches anyone who qualifies as an insured, which is a slightly different route to the same result.
CG 20 10 12 19, read from the same packet, amends Section II Who Is An Insured to add the scheduled person or organization as an additional insured for liability caused in whole or in part by the named insured's acts or omissions. It also caps the coverage at what the contract required and limits it to the extent permitted by law. What it never mentions is payment order. Nothing in the CG 20 series from the 04 13 revision onward makes the policy primary or stops the insurer seeking contribution, which is why a contract that requires additional insured status without also requiring primary and noncontributory has left the question open.
The packet these forms came from is a useful model of what to ask for. Behind a single ACORD 25 sat the additional insured endorsement, the primary and noncontributory endorsement for general liability, and the primary and noncontributory endorsement for commercial auto, each printed with its own form number, edition date and policy number, and each showing a transaction effective date. That last field matters: an endorsement dated after a loss is not going to help with that loss. If a vendor sends a certificate and nothing else, you have received a summary of a packet like this rather than the packet.
Primary means that policy pays first, before any other insurance that might cover the same loss. Noncontributory means the insurer gives up its right to ask another insurer to share the cost. Together they put the whole loss on the vendor's policy up to its limits, instead of splitting it with yours.
It describes how two policies interact when both could respond to the same claim. Normally insurers share the loss under their other insurance conditions. A primary and noncontributory endorsement removes that sharing on one policy, so it pays in full first and never bills the other carrier for a contribution.
It is a form attached to a policy that rewrites the Other Insurance condition. On general liability the ISO form is CG 20 01, titled Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition. It adds a paragraph stating the insurance is primary to and will not seek contribution from other insurance available to an additional insured.
On general liability it is CG 20 01, currently in the 12 19 edition and previously 04 13. On commercial auto it is CA 04 49, edition 11 16. Some carriers use their own manuscript versions with different numbers, so check the form title rather than assuming the number.
CG 20 01 states: this insurance is primary to and will not seek contribution from any other insurance available to an additional insured under your policy, provided that the additional insured is a Named Insured under such other insurance, and you have agreed in writing that this insurance would be primary and noncontributory.
No. Primary and noncontributory controls which insurer pays first and stops one insurer billing another for a share. A waiver of subrogation stops the vendor's insurer recovering from you personally after it pays its own insured. One is about insurers splitting a bill, the other is about the insurer coming after you.
No. Additional insured status decides whether you are covered under the vendor's policy at all. Primary and noncontributory decides whether that policy pays before yours. You can hold additional insured status on a policy that still expects your own insurer to contribute, which is why contracts require both.
No. From the 04 13 revision onward CG 20 10 grants additional insured status and says nothing about payment order. That gap is precisely why ISO introduced CG 20 01 in the same revision. Requiring CG 20 10 alone leaves your own carrier free to be asked for a contribution.
The 12 19 edition adds the Liquor Liability Coverage Part to the two coverage parts the 04 13 edition already modified. The operative wording and both conditions are identical between the editions. Unless liquor liability is part of the exposure, the two work the same way.
CA 04 49, edition 11 16, titled Primary And Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition. It modifies the Business Auto, Auto Dealers and Motor Carrier coverage forms. CG 20 01 does nothing for the auto policy, so a contract requiring this on auto needs CA 04 49 specifically.
ISO publishes no workers compensation equivalent. Comp benefits are statutory and paid regardless of other insurance, so the contribution problem the endorsement solves does not arise the same way. Contract clauses demanding it on the comp line are normally satisfied with a waiver of subrogation instead.
Not reliably. The ACORD 25 grid has checkboxes for additional insured and waiver of subrogation only. There is no column for primary and noncontributory, so it can appear only as free text in the Description of Operations box, which is a claim rather than proof.
Ask for the endorsement pages and look for CG 20 01 on the general liability policy or CA 04 49 on the auto policy. The form number prints in the top right corner and again in the footer. A sentence typed onto a certificate is not the endorsement and does not amend anything.
Usually not as a separate charge on general liability or auto. Most carriers attach CG 20 01 without an itemized premium, often as part of a contractors endorsement package. Underwriting appetite is the real constraint, since some carriers decline it for certain classes rather than pricing it.
Your own insurer can be asked to contribute to a loss caused by your vendor. That means a claim on your loss history, an eroded limit, and a likely premium effect at renewal, even though the work was not yours. The vendor's policy still responds, it just does not carry the whole loss.
By capturing the form number and edition from each endorsement as structured data and comparing them to the requirement recorded against that contract, per coverage line. Reading the certificate face is not enough, because the certificate has no field for this requirement in the first place.
CG 20 10, CG 20 37 and the rest of the CG 20 series.
CG 24 04, CG 24 53 and the workers compensation waiver form.
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