Why it matters for your company
Landlords, customers and site owners ask for a certificate before you sign or set foot on site. The industry uses one standard certificate layout, so a risk manager can read yours in a minute: the lines, the policy numbers, the limits, the effective and expiry dates, and a description box for the project or location.
The certificate carries a printed statement that it confers no rights and does not amend the policy. What gives a customer real protection is the endorsement behind it: additional insured status, a waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory wording. A good certificate points to each one, and a careful customer asks for the pages.
Turnaround is a broker task, and once the right endorsements are on the policy a new certificate is quick. The slow case is a contract asking for something the policy does not yet carry, because that needs a change from the insurer before the certificate can honestly show it.
Related terms
- Additional insuredA person or company added to your policy by endorsement so they can claim under it too, usually a landlord or customer whose contract asks for it. They get a right to defense and payment for claims arising from your work, within the limits of the endorsement.
- 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.
- 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.
- BinderA temporary written confirmation from the insurer that coverage is in force on agreed terms while the full policy is being issued. It is enforceable for the period it states.
- 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.