Why it matters for your company
A pilot agreement or a lease almost always asks for the counterparty to be named as additional insured on your general liability. If your robot injures someone on their floor and the injured person sues the site owner, the site owner can tender that suit to your insurer instead of their own. That is the whole reason they ask.
The status is created by an endorsement on the policy, and the certificate only reports it. A certificate with the additional insured box ticked and no endorsement behind it gives the customer nothing, which is why a careful risk manager asks for the endorsement page itself.
Endorsements come in two shapes. A blanket endorsement adds anyone your written contract requires, so a new customer is picked up automatically. A scheduled endorsement lists names one at a time, and a customer who signs mid-term needs a change before the certificate is accurate.
Related terms
- Certificate of insuranceA one-page summary issued by your broker that shows which policies you carry, their limits and dates, and who the certificate holder is. It proves coverage exists and changes nothing about it.
- EndorsementA page attached to a policy that changes it: it adds coverage, removes it, names a new party, or rewrites a definition. The endorsement controls over the base form wherever the two disagree.
- Primary and non-contributoryWording that makes your policy pay first for a claim involving an additional insured, without asking the additional insured's own policy to share the loss. Customers and landlords ask for it to keep their own insurance out of claims your work causes.
- Waiver of subrogationAn endorsement in which your insurer gives up its right to recover a paid claim from a party your contract names. Customers ask for it so your insurer cannot pay your loss and then sue them for it.
- Contractual liabilityLiability you take on by agreeing to it in a contract, most often through an indemnity clause that makes you pay for a customer's losses. Policies respond to some of it and exclude the rest, so the clause and the form have to be read together.