Is This COI Compliant? Decoding the Key Terms that Make Up an Insurance Policy

When you’re reading a certificate of insurance to make sure it’s “compliant,” you’re looking for a few things. First and foremost, that it’s a valid certificate (i.e. neither expired nor fraudulent). With fraudulent COIs on the rise, and relatively easy to create, this first criteria can be more difficult to verify than it may seem. Read How to Spot a Fake COI to learn more about how to catch fraudulent certificates of insurance.

Secondly, you’re making sure that it meets the insurance requirements stated in a contract. These can be as simple as “has insurance,” or they can have layers of limits and endorsements that must be met. For example, if the requirement is to have “General Liability insurance with a $1 Million per occurrence limit and a $2 Million aggregate limit, listing your company as an additional insured, with a waiver of subrogation in their favor,” having the right coverage and limits does not automatically make them compliant. In the next section, we’ll take a look at some of the terms in that sample requirement, and how they change the actual insurance policy.

For speed reading tips to quickly and thoroughly check ACORD certificates of insurance, check out How to Read a COI Like a Pro.