A general contractor asks for four things before you set foot on the job: a certificate of insurance, additional insured status, a waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory wording. The certificate is the only one of the four that grants nothing. It is also the only one most subcontractors ever look at.
It reports. The ACORD 25 says on its face that it is issued as a matter of information only, that it confers no rights on the certificate holder, and that it does not amend, extend or alter the coverage in the policies listed. It carries a further notice in substance: if the holder is an additional insured, the policy must contain additional insured provisions or be endorsed, and if subrogation is waived, an endorsement may be required.
That language exists because the certificate is a snapshot produced by an agency, not a contract issued by a carrier. The policy is the contract. A checked box on a certificate that says "additional insured" while no endorsement sits on the policy is a clerical statement, not coverage. When a claim comes in, the carrier reads the policy.
The working rule for both sides of the transaction: ask for the endorsements, not just the certificate.
Additional insured status comes from the CG 20 series of endorsements or from a qualifying provision in the policy form. Two forms do most of the work in construction, and they are a matched pair.
Requiring only CG 20 10 leaves a gap that opens the day the subcontractor demobilizes. On a Texas construction defect claim surfacing two years after substantial completion, that gap is the whole case. Contracts should call for both forms, and the certificate should reference both.
Blanket forms, such as CG 20 33 and CG 20 38, extend status automatically to any party the named insured has agreed in a written contract to add. They are efficient, and they are only as broad as the triggering language, so read what actually activates them.
Coverage for the additional insured is generally tied to liability arising out of the named insured's work or operations. It is not a grant of coverage for everything the upstream party does on the site, and the policy's own exclusions and limits still apply. The additional insured also shares the subcontractor's limits. Four parties named on a $1 million policy do not each have $1 million.
The endorsement is titled Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us, ISO form CG 24 04, with a blanket version at CG 24 53. Where it applies, the subcontractor's insurer gives up its right to recover from the named upstream party after paying a loss on the subcontractor's behalf.
Three things it does not do, all of them commonly misunderstood:
Waivers are also written by line. A waiver on the general liability policy does nothing on the workers compensation policy, which requires its own endorsement. Contracts that demand a waiver "on all policies" mean exactly that, and a partial response will bounce back from a compliance reviewer.
Without it, the standard other insurance condition makes the policy excess over any other primary insurance available to a party that qualifies as an additional insured under someone else's policy. Upstream parties did not want that answer, so ISO introduced CG 20 01, Primary and Noncontributory, Other Insurance Condition. It states that the coverage provided to the additional insured is primary and will not seek contribution from that party's own insurance, subject to the endorsement's terms.
The practical effect for a subcontractor is that your policy answers first and your limits erode first. That is a real cost, and it is part of what you are agreeing to when you sign.
This is the part most national guidance skips. Subchapter C of Chapter 151 of the Texas Insurance Code, commonly called the Texas Anti-Indemnity Act, has applied to construction contracts since January 1, 2012.
Indemnity and insurance now rise and fall together in Texas. A subcontract that names the general contractor as an additional insured for the general contractor's own negligence is unenforceable to that extent, whatever the certificate says. The statute also reaches further than the word "construction" suggests. It applies to contracts for the construction, alteration, renovation, remodeling, maintenance or repair of an improvement to real property, which sweeps in service agreements and master service agreements that nobody drafted as construction contracts.
If you are the subcontractor or vendor granting these:
If you are the general contractor, owner or property manager requiring them:
Event and venue contracts run on the same machinery, and we touched on the additional insured piece of that in our look at hotel liquor liability. If you have a subcontract or a master service agreement sitting in your inbox with an insurance exhibit you have not read closely, send it to us with your current declarations page. We will tell you which requirements your policy already meets, which ones cost money, and which ones Texas law will not enforce anyway.