A Certificate of Insurance can look complete at first glance and still contain issues that deserve attention.
Before approving a contractor or vendor, it helps to review the certificate against the insurance requirements for the work being performed.
What Should You Check on a COI?
1. Named Insured
Start with the company listed as the insured.
Does the business name match the contractor or vendor you’re actually hiring?
Watch for differences in legal names, DBAs, subsidiaries, or other entities that may not match your contract.
2. Insurance Carrier
Identify the insurance companies listed on the certificate.
The certificate should clearly show which insurer corresponds to each policy.
3. Policy Effective and Expiration Dates
Confirm that the required policies are currently within their effective periods.
A certificate collected months ago may contain coverage that has since expired.
For ongoing projects, expiration dates should continue to be monitored after the initial review. If a policy has already lapsed, the expired COI guide covers what to check next.
4. Types of Coverage
Compare the policies shown on the certificate with your project’s insurance requirements.
Depending on the work, requirements may include:
- Commercial General Liability
- Automobile Liability
- Workers' Compensation
- Employers Liability
- Umbrella or Excess Liability
The requirements will vary by contract, company and project.
5. Policy Limits
Having the right type of insurance isn’t enough if the limits don’t satisfy your requirements.
Compare limits such as:
- Each Occurrence
- General Aggregate
- Products/Completed Operations Aggregate
- Automobile Combined Single Limit
- Employers Liability
- Umbrella/Excess limits
against the requirements established for the contractor or project.
6. Additional Insured Requirements
If your contract requires your organization to be included as an additional insured, don’t assume that being listed as the certificate holder means the requirement has been satisfied.
Additional-insured coverage may depend on the applicable policy and endorsement language.
When required, confirm that the appropriate supporting documentation has been provided. The additional insured guide walks through that review in detail.
7. Waiver of Subrogation and Other Requirements
Some contracts require specific insurance provisions or endorsements.
Compare the certificate and supporting documents against the actual requirements established for the project rather than relying on a generic checklist.
8. Certificate Holder
Check the certificate holder information carefully.
The organization and address should correspond with the requirements for the project.
9. Description of Operations
Review the Description of Operations section for references to the project, operations, additional-insured language or other relevant information.
Don’t rely on this section alone to establish coverage.
10. Look for Inconsistencies
Before approving the certificate, look for information that doesn’t make sense.
Examples include:
- Expired policy dates
- Missing required coverage
- Limits below requirements
- Contractor name mismatches
- Missing policy information
- Unexpected certificate-holder information
- Requirements referenced but not supported by the documents provided
An inconsistency doesn’t automatically mean a certificate is invalid. It means the item may need further review.
Working through the same items in the same order each time helps. The contractor COI compliance checklist turns this list into something you can run against every certificate.
A COI Is Part of the Review — Not the Entire Policy
A Certificate of Insurance summarizes insurance information but does not replace the underlying insurance policy.
For important coverage questions, supporting endorsements, policy documentation, the insurance producer, carrier, or qualified insurance professional may need to be consulted.
Reviewing a standardized ACORD form?
Reviewing COIs Manually?
Verisova helps teams review contractor insurance documents and identify items that may require attention.
Upload a certificate and review:
- Policy dates
- Coverage types
- Limits
- Contractor information
- Certificate-holder information
- Project requirements
- Endorsement information
- Potential inconsistencies
Know what needs attention before the contractor goes onsite.
Want to Automate Part of This Review?
Several of the checks above are comparisons — a limit against a required minimum, an expiration date against a project timeline, a certificate holder against the entity the contract names. Those are the parts that can be done for you.
Verisova’s COI verification software reads an uploaded certificate, extracts the coverage detail, and compares it against the insurance requirements you have defined for the project the work is happening on. Each finding names the field, the value read from the certificate and the requirement it was measured against, so it can be checked rather than taken on trust.
What it does not do is contact the insurer. It reviews the documentation you have been given against the requirements you set; confirming that a policy is in force today still means asking the producer or carrier, and the platform gives you the producer, policy number and NAIC number to ask with. Judgement calls about coverage remain yours.
Where to go next