ACORD 25 Verification: What to Check Before Approving a Contractor

The ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance provides a standardized summary of commercial insurance information.

But collecting the certificate is only the beginning.

Before approving a contractor, compare the information on the certificate with the insurance requirements established for the work.

This page is about that decision — what to compare, and what should stop a contractor being cleared. If you need the form itself explained first, how to read an ACORD 25 goes box by box through what each field means, including the ones with no obvious label.

How to Review an ACORD 25

Producer

The Producer section identifies the insurance agency or producer associated with the certificate.

If information on the certificate needs clarification, the producer may be an appropriate point of contact.

Insured

Check the Named Insured carefully.

The organization listed here should correspond with the contractor or business you’re evaluating.

A difference between the contractor’s legal entity and the insured shown on the certificate deserves further review.

Insurers Affording Coverage

This section identifies the insurers associated with the policies shown on the certificate.

Match the insurer letters to the individual coverage lines below.

Coverages

Determine which policies are represented.

Common commercial coverages include:

• Commercial General Liability
• Automobile Liability
• Umbrella/Excess Liability
• Workers' Compensation
• Employers Liability

Compare these with your contractor insurance requirements.

Policy Numbers

Check that policy information is present where expected and corresponds with the appropriate coverage.

Effective and Expiration Dates

A contractor can provide a legitimate certificate today and have a policy expire during the project.

Review both dates and determine whether ongoing expiration monitoring is necessary.

Note also what the dates do and do not tell you. A certificate showing a current policy period is evidence that the policy existed when the certificate was issued. It is not proof that the policy is still in force today, because a policy can be cancelled mid-term without the certificate changing. Where being sure matters, the producer and carrier named on the certificate are who to ask.

Limits

Compare the listed limits against your requirements.

For Commercial General Liability, this may include:

• Each Occurrence
• Damage to Rented Premises
• Medical Expense
• Personal & Advertising Injury
• General Aggregate
• Products/Completed Operations Aggregate

Your required limits depend on your organization’s insurance standards and the work being performed.

Additional Insured Indicators

If additional-insured status is required, determine whether the certificate indicates it and whether supporting endorsements or other documentation are required.

Being named as the certificate holder should not automatically be treated as proof of additional-insured coverage — the additional insured guide explains the distinction.

Description of Operations

This section can contain important information about operations, projects and insurance requirements.

Review it carefully, but remember that statements appearing on a certificate do not replace the terms of the actual insurance policy.

Certificate Holder

Verify that the correct organization is listed.

Incorrect company names or addresses can indicate that the certificate wasn’t prepared for the intended project or recipient.

The Question Isn’t Just “Did We Receive the ACORD 25?”

The better question is:

Does the contractor’s insurance documentation match what this project requires?

That requires comparing the certificate against your requirements and identifying anything that needs additional review.

Make ACORD 25 Review Faster

Verisova analyzes contractor insurance documents and organizes the information into a structured review.

Instead of manually hunting through every field, quickly identify:

• Coverage
• Limits
• Policy dates
• Certificate information
• Contractor information
• Requirements
• Endorsement information
• Items requiring attention

Verisova’s COI verification software is built around this form: it reads the sections above out of an uploaded ACORD 25 and compares them with the requirements you have set for the project. It reports what the certificate says and where that departs from your requirements — it does not contact the carrier, so it cannot tell you a policy is currently in force. The ACORD 25 extraction itself is described in detail, including what it does with continuation pages and how it reports a field it could not read.

Upload an ACORD 25 and see what Verisova finds — two reviews are free.