A certificate of insurance looks like proof. It lists policy numbers and limits and a checkbox for additional insured status, and most businesses treat it as the document that protects them once a client accepts it. ACORD's own certificate form disagrees: its printed note states that if the certificate holder needs additional insured status, the policy itself must carry that provision or be endorsed. A statement on the certificate does not confer those rights in its place.
Solstice Interior Finishes, a fictional flooring and interior-finishes subcontractor, runs three general contractor agreements at once: Meridian Builders, Ashford Construction, and Bellwether GC. All three require additional insured status while work is in progress, which its policy provides automatically through a blanket endorsement, ISO form CG 20 33, that triggers the moment a written contract asks for it. Two of the three, Meridian and Bellwether, also require that status to continue for two to three years after the work finishes, because a claim tied to a floor installed months earlier can still surface.
That endorsement's own text ends an additional insured's status once the work performed for them is complete, and nothing else on the policy picks up what it drops. Ten requirement lines run across the three contracts once the agreement each one actually signed is read clause by clause; Client Requirement Matrix checks every line against what Policy Register shows attached. Eight are met. Two are not, the same completed-operations clause twice, on the two projects that finished months ago and still sit inside the window their own contracts require.
Certificate of Insurance Request Tracker