A waiver of subrogation endorsement stops your vendor insurance company from suing you to recover what it paid its own insured. Each coverage line uses a different form: CG 24 04 on general liability, CA 04 44 on business auto, and the waiver of our right to recover endorsement on workers compensation. A tick in the certificate SUBR WVD column is not the endorsement and does not prove one exists. This page lists the forms, quotes what each one actually says, and shows how to check the one your vendor sent you. Upload a certificate above and the AI reads the waiver form numbers off the page.
Last updated August 2026
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The forms that actually create a waiver, line by line. The CG 24 04 wording below was read directly from two issued policies, one on the 05 09 edition and one on the 12 19 edition, and the workers compensation wording from an issued California endorsement. Titles for CG 24 53, CA 04 44 and CA 04 43 come from the ISO form indexes and coverage publications rather than from the form documents themselves.
| Form | Coverage line | Official title | Scheduled or automatic |
|---|---|---|---|
| CG 24 04 | General liability | Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us (Waiver of Subrogation) | Scheduled by design, but most carriers issue it with blanket schedule wording instead of a name |
| CG 24 53 | General liability | Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us (Waiver of Subrogation), Automatic | Automatic where a written contract requires it. Introduced in the December 2019 ISO revision |
| CA 04 44 | Business auto | Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us (Waiver of Subrogation) | Scheduled. The party has to be listed for the waiver to apply |
| CA 04 43 | Business auto | Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us (Waiver of Subrogation), Automatic When Required By Written Contract or Agreement | Automatic |
| WC 00 03 13 | Workers compensation | Waiver of Our Right to Recover From Others Endorsement | Scheduled, with state-specific versions. Carries an extra premium, unlike most liability waivers |
| CP 00 90 | Commercial property | Commercial Property Conditions. Not a waiver endorsement | Neither. The condition already allows a written waiver made before the loss, so no endorsement is normally needed |
Waivers fail quietly. Nobody finds out until an insurance company files a recovery action against the very company that thought it was protected.
It is a checkbox on an ACORD 25 filled in by whoever produced the document, usually an agency assistant working from a contract summary. It records a claim that a waiver endorsement exists. It does not name the form, it does not carry the edition date, and it is not evidence from the carrier. A ticked box with no endorsement behind it looks exactly like a ticked box with one.
The December 2019 CG 24 04 waives recovery only to the extent the insured waived its own right of recovery against you before the loss. If the subcontract was signed after work started, or if your contract requires a waiver from the vendor without the vendor waiving anything, the endorsement can sit in the policy and still do nothing.
A waiver on the CGL policy leaves the auto and workers compensation carriers free to subrogate. Workers compensation is where the money usually is, because an injured employee claim is the one most likely to be pushed back onto the property owner or general contractor. Requiring a waiver across all lines and then only checking the general liability certificate is the most common version of this mistake.
Liability waivers are often issued at no additional charge. Workers compensation waivers are rated: the California endorsement reproduced below states an additional premium of five percent of the workers compensation premium on the payroll for that job. A vendor with thin margins has a direct financial reason not to buy one, and a certificate is easier to tick than an endorsement is to purchase.
COISoftware reads the waiver form number off the endorsement pages themselves, checks it against what the contract for that vendor requires, and tells you which coverage lines are actually waived.
CG 24 04 on the liability policy, CA 04 44 on the auto policy, the workers compensation waiver on the comp policy. Each is captured against the policy it amends, so a waiver on one line is never mistaken for coverage across all of them.
Set the requirement once. If your contract calls for a waiver on general liability, auto and workers compensation and the packet only contains one, the vendor is flagged as short and told which line is missing.
CG 24 04 05 09 and CG 24 04 12 19 read the same to a filing clerk and behave differently at claim time. Both halves of the number are stored, so you can find every vendor on the narrower edition in one search.
A blanket waiver is a scheduled form with schedule text instead of a name. The AI reads that text, so a schedule reading where required by written contract is recognized as a blanket grant rather than logged as an empty field.
Carriers change editions and drop endorsements at renewal without telling anyone downstream. Every renewal certificate is compared against last year, so a waiver that quietly disappears surfaces as an exception instead of an assumption.
A request naming the form gets filled. A request saying your certificate is non-compliant gets ignored. Non-compliant verdicts name the coverage line and the form, which is what the vendor agent needs in order to issue it.
Five checks, in the order that finds problems fastest.
A certificate with SUBR WVD ticked is a statement about the policy, not part of it. Request the endorsement pages. If the vendor agency cannot produce them within a few days, treat the waiver as unproven rather than as a paperwork delay.
Tip: Endorsement pages are headed THIS ENDORSEMENT CHANGES THE POLICY. PLEASE READ IT CAREFULLY, or on workers compensation forms by a policy number and attaching clause. A certificate never carries either.
General liability waivers print as CG 24 04 followed by the edition, for example CG 24 04 12 19, in the top right corner and again in the footer beside the ISO copyright line. Auto waivers print as CA 04 44 or CA 04 43. Workers compensation forms carry the WC number and a state code.
Tip: CG 24 is the waiver series. CG 20 is additional insured and CG 25 is aggregate limits. Getting one when the contract asked for the other is common.
If the schedule names your entity, the waiver is scheduled and applies to you by name. If it reads something like any person or organization for whom the named insured has agreed by written contract to furnish this waiver, it is a blanket grant and applies to you only if such a contract exists.
Tip: A schedule box that is genuinely empty is a red flag. It usually means the endorsement was issued but never completed, and an incomplete schedule can be argued to name nobody at all.
On the 12 19 edition the waiver applies only to the extent the insured waived its own right of recovery before the loss. Blanket schedule wording usually adds that the written contract has to be executed prior to the occurrence. A subcontract signed three weeks into the job undermines the waiver you are relying on.
Tip: This is a contracting problem, not an insurance problem, and it is worth fixing once in your onboarding sequence rather than chasing it per vendor.
Waivers do not travel between policies. Verify one endorsement per line: general liability, business auto, workers compensation, and umbrella or excess where your contract extends the requirement upward. Umbrella policies follow form for some conditions and not others, so the waiver often has to be endorsed separately there too.
Tip: Workers compensation is the line most often required and most often missing, because it is the one line where the waiver carries a real premium charge.
The policy language itself, transcribed from issued endorsements, plus the comparisons people look up while a certificate is open in front of them.
Read from an issued commercial general liability policy. The endorsement modifies the Commercial General Liability Coverage Part and the Products/Completed Operations Liability Coverage Part, and adds the following to Paragraph 8, Transfer Of Rights Of Recovery Against Others To Us, of Section IV Conditions:
We waive any right of recovery we may have against the person or organization shown in the Schedule above because of payments we make for injury or damage arising out of your ongoing operations or "your work" done under a contract with that person or organization and included in the "products-completed operations hazard". This waiver applies only to the person or organization shown in the Schedule above.
On that policy the schedule did not name a company. It read Where required by written contract or written agreement, which is exactly how a blanket waiver is issued: the same scheduled form, with a description in the schedule instead of a name.
Read from a second issued policy. Three things are different and all three matter.
First, the title gained the words Waiver of Subrogation in parentheses, which is why searches for both phrasings return the same form. Second, the list of coverage parts it can amend grew from two to eight, adding Electronic Data Liability, Liquor Liability, both Pollution Liability designated sites forms, Railroad Protective Liability and the Underground Storage Tank policy. Third, and most important, the operative sentence changed:
We waive any right of recovery against the person(s) or organization(s) shown in the Schedule above because of payments we make under this Coverage Part. Such waiver by us applies only to the extent that the insured has waived its right of recovery against such person(s) or organization(s) prior to loss. This endorsement applies only to the person(s) or organization(s) shown in the Schedule above.
The 05 09 wording tied the waiver to injury or damage arising out of the vendor operations or work. The 12 19 wording covers any payment under the coverage part, which is broader, but conditions the whole thing on the insured having waived its own rights against you before the loss. In practice that shifts the burden onto your contract. If your subcontract does not contain a mutual waiver of claims, or was signed after the work began, the endorsement may give you nothing even though it is sitting in the policy.
The blanket schedule on the 12 19 policy read in full:
Person(s) or Organization(s) as required by written contract when such written contract is executed prior to an occurrence, offense or loss to which this endorsement applies. Any individually scheduled Waivers shall not be construed to override nor negate this blanket Waiver.
That second sentence is worth knowing about. It resolves an argument that comes up when a vendor also holds a scheduled waiver naming one customer: without it, an insurance company can argue the specific schedule limits the blanket grant.
From an issued California endorsement, Waiver Of Our Right To Recover From Others Endorsement:
We have the right to recover our payments from anyone liable for an injury covered by this policy. We will not enforce our right against the person or organization named in the Schedule. (This agreement applies only to the extent that you perform work under a written contract that requires you to obtain this agreement from us). You must maintain payroll records accurately segregating the remuneration of your employees while engaged in the work described in the Schedule.
That same endorsement states the additional premium as five percent of the California workers compensation premium otherwise due on the segregated payroll. Countrywide the charge and the percentage vary by state and carrier, and some assigned-risk plans restrict waivers entirely, but the point holds: a comp waiver is a purchase, not a formality. That is the reason it is the line most often promised and least often delivered.
A scheduled waiver names one party. It is easy to prove and painful to administer, because every new customer means a new endorsement request. A blanket waiver applies to anyone a written contract requires it for. It is easy to administer and harder to prove, because the endorsement itself names nobody and its effect depends on a contract the insurance company has not seen. For a business collecting certificates, blanket is usually acceptable, provided you hold a signed contract with a waiver clause and can date it before the work started.
They protect against opposite directions of attack and you generally want both. Additional insured status gives you coverage and a defense under the vendor policy when a third party sues you. A waiver of subrogation stops the vendor own insurance company from turning around and recovering from you after it pays a claim. Neither substitutes for the other, and requiring only one is a common contract template gap. The full comparison, including where primary and non-contributory fits, is in waiver of subrogation vs additional insured.
Same thing, two names. Waiver of subrogation is the industry term and the phrase contracts use. Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us is the official ISO form title, because the condition being amended is called Transfer Of Rights Of Recovery Against Others To Us. If a contract asks for one and the endorsement is titled the other, nothing is wrong.
A waiver of subrogation is an agreement by an insurance company that it will not pursue a third party to recover money it paid on a claim. Without it, a vendor insurer that pays a loss can sue the property owner or general contractor it believes caused that loss. The waiver removes that right for the party named or described in the endorsement.
It is the form attached to the policy that creates the waiver. The endorsement is the operative document. A certificate of insurance only reports that one was issued, and the ACORD 25 states on its face that it confers no rights and does not amend the policies. Without the endorsement, a waiver requirement in your contract has not been met.
It depends on the coverage line. General liability uses ISO form CG 24 04, or CG 24 53 for the automatic version. Business auto uses CA 04 44, or CA 04 43 for the automatic version. Workers compensation uses the waiver of our right to recover from others endorsement, numbered WC 00 03 13 countrywide with state-specific variants.
A blanket waiver applies automatically to anyone the policyholder has agreed in a written contract to waive against, rather than to one named company. In practice it is usually the ordinary CG 24 04 issued with schedule wording such as where required by written contract instead of a name, or the CG 24 53 automatic form introduced in the 2019 ISO revision.
On general liability it is normally CG 24 04 with blanket schedule wording, or CG 24 53 if the carrier uses the automatic form. On business auto it is CA 04 43. On workers compensation there is no separate blanket number: carriers issue the standard waiver endorsement with a blanket description in the schedule, and many use a proprietary form instead.
CG 24 04 is written as a scheduled form, but it becomes a blanket waiver when the carrier types a description into the schedule instead of a company name. Both of the issued policies quoted on this page did exactly that. So the answer depends entirely on what the schedule box says, which is why the schedule is the part worth reading.
The countrywide form is WC 00 03 13, titled Waiver Of Our Right To Recover From Others Endorsement. Many states use their own version, such as the California endorsement quoted above. All of them say the insurer will not enforce its recovery right against the party in the schedule, and only where the insured works under a contract requiring it.
On general liability and auto the waiver is often issued at no additional charge, or is already part of a blanket endorsement the vendor carries. Workers compensation is different because the waiver is rated. The California endorsement quoted above charges five percent of the comp premium on the payroll for that job. Rates vary by state and carrier.
The vendor requests it from their own insurance agent, who has the carrier attach the endorsement. You cannot obtain one directly, because it amends someone else policy. Send the vendor the contract clause and the form number for each line you need, then ask for the endorsement pages rather than a revised certificate.
No. The SUBR WVD column on an ACORD 25 is a checkbox filled in by whoever prepared the document. It is a statement about the policy, not evidence from the carrier, and it does not name the form or the edition. Treat a ticked box as a prompt to request the endorsement. The detail of where it appears is covered in the guide to <a href="/blog/waiver-of-subrogation-certificate-of-insurance">waiver of subrogation on a certificate of insurance</a>.
Yes, they cover different risks. Additional insured status defends and indemnifies you when someone sues you. A waiver of subrogation stops the vendor insurer from recovering from you after it has paid its own insured. A claim can easily produce the second exposure and not the first, so contracts normally require both.
Effectively yes. The 12 19 CG 24 04 applies only to the extent the insured waived its rights before the loss, and blanket schedule wording typically requires the contract to be executed before the occurrence. Property policies follow the same logic: the Commercial Property Conditions allow a written waiver made before the loss, with only narrow exceptions afterward.
Almost never for the loss that already happened. Once the insurer has a recovery right it will not give it up, and the endorsement wording conditions the waiver on a pre-loss agreement. A waiver added after the fact protects you going forward. It does not retroactively cure the claim that triggered the request.
Yes. Waiver of subrogation is the industry and contract term. Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us is the official ISO title, taken from the name of the policy condition the endorsement amends. The 2019 edition of CG 24 04 puts both phrases in the title to end the confusion.
By capturing the form number, edition date and coverage line from each endorsement as structured data and comparing them to the requirement recorded for that contract. Filing PDFs cannot answer which of my vendors lack a comp waiver. Extracted data answers it in seconds and catches the endorsements carriers drop at renewal.
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