Certificate Of Insurance ACORD Form  

If you own multiple properties such as office buildings or retail space, then you need to make sure your tenants and vendors at these properties are carrying the right kind of insurance. This is important because it protects you, your employees, and your residents alike from risk created by those tenants and vendors. Likewise, if you manage properties, the building owners know you are looking out for their assets protecting them from the potential of disasters, such as fires and property damage. This is why you ask for a filled-out certificate of insurance ACORD form.

ACORD—The Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development—is a nonprofit organization in the insurance industry. According to their website, they “facilitate fast, accurate data exchange and more efficient workflows through the development of electronic standards, standardized forms, and tools to support their use.”

This is an important distinction to make: ACORD is not an insurer. They do not issue policies, assume risk, or pay claims. Because of their prominent position, though, many insurance brokers and agents use the standardized forms they produce. And also because of that same standardization, understanding ACORD certificate of insurance forms is pretty simple.

Despite how simple this may sound, there is actually a lot of information that should be included on a certificate of insurance ACORD form. For example, this form will probably have information regarding the date your policy becomes effective, when the policy expires, and the type (or types) of coverage you have. This certificate should also have information on who owns the policy and the contact information of the insurance company. There are also multiple types of ACORD insurance forms, each with its own particular purpose, so make sure your broker or agent gave you the one you asked for. 

These are the kinds of things you check when you need to know how to verify a certificate of insurance before you deliver it. And if you want to know how to get ACORD insurance certificates? Request them from your broker or agent.

ACORD Certificate of Insurance Sample

If you’re trying to understand what a certificate of insurance does, looking at an ACORD certificate of insurance sample is one of the best places to start. As we said above, the nonprofit ACORD—the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development—publishes and maintains an extensive list of standardized forms. Using a list of ACORD forms makes it easy to ensure that you’re using forms that the larger insurance industry will recognize. The most common general liability insurance form, for example, is the ACORD 25. An ACORD form 25 sample form will show how this should look when it’s issued by your broker or agent.

A certificate of insurance is issued by an agent and certifies that the named insured carries the protections and coverage listed at the time the certificate was issued. That’s the most simple form of a certificate of insurance explained, and once you know exactly which one you need, any list of ACORD form samples will help you find it.

Even if you do not know how to navigate a certificate of insurance ACORD form, and you’re getting them from contractors or vendors, there are professionals who can help you navigate this process, particularly when trying to make sure that you have the right form. Do not hesitate to reach out to your insurance risk management team or general counsel and request their expertise. It is important for you and your property investments to make sure that you received the right certificate of insurance ACORD form. This information will be important for satisfying the requirements of whoever is asking for the form itself, particularly lenders and even inspectors.

Certificate of Insurance Form Sample

If you’re a contractor or a vendor, a certificate of insurance ACORD form is only one of the many types of insurance forms you might be sharing with someone else, though. In general, then, it is helpful to see a certificate of insurance form sample. 

At its most basic, this certificate has all the relevant information regarding your insurance policy. There is a lot of information that could be included on this form. For example, this form might have information on when the policy comes into play, its duration, who owns the policy, what the limit on the policy is, and who you need to contact if you need to file a claim.

If you are looking for a sample certificate of insurance with additional insured, though, then you might be looking for a slightly different document. This certificate includes added endorsements in very specific situations. If you need a certificate of insurance with additional insured, you need to reach out to the insurance agent or broker to make sure you have this type of coverage.

If you’re looking for a certificate holder insurance form, well, stop looking. That’s not a thing. A certificate holder is the entity who receives the certificate of insurance from a contractor, vendor or other provider. If you receive certificates, that’s you. If you provide them to companies that hire you, that’s the company hiring you.

ACORD Certificate of Insurance Verification

Choosing the right form makes ensuring your vendors and contractors are in compliance much easier. With an ACORD certificate of insurance verification becomes a matter of confirming each of the listed values matches what your requirements are.

Easy, right? Not exactly. The easy and unquestioned access of anyone to free ACORD forms means that you may need to also verify the coverage with the insurer. Anyone can download a sample ACORD 25 PDF, look up an ACORD forms instruction guide, and mark it up however they like. Knowing how to verify a certificate of insurance with the issuing agent is a handy skill for risk team members or compliance admins to have.

Sometimes it’s not just coverage you have to verify. If you’ve held this certificate for a while, you may want to verify that the certificate is still valid. Coverage expires, or gets modified, and sometimes new certificates with accurate coverage are not provided to you. 

ACORD 25 Instructions

If you are looking for a way to track your certificates of insurance, there are plenty of ACORD forms that can help you do exactly this. For instance, you might be looking at a list of ACORD forms, wondering which ones you need to request from your third parties. One of the most important forms you might come across during this process is the ACORD 25 general liability form. If you are looking at an ACORD 25 sample, wondering what you are supposed to do with this, then start by taking a look at the ACORD 25 instructions. They are readily available online which is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, it means you can find the reference materials you need. But on the other, because of the easy availability of, for instance, the ACORD 25 fillable 2021 has seen people attempting to forge the forms. 

Many insurance companies use the ACORD 26, and we sometimes get asked about this form. This is a certification log form, used by insurers to keep a hard copy record of the policies issued to a single insured. This is not a form you’re ever going to see or need to see, as a risk management professional who receives COIs.  

Finally, there is also an ACORD 27, which is the ACORD evidence of property insurance.

These are just a few of the possible points of confusion you may run into while looking for instructions for the ACORD 25. The number, as with most any kind of form, is the key component.

ACORD Form Insurance

In the end, it’s an ACORD form insurance companies trust most, because ACORD has the widest footprint when it comes to forms. They’re easily available, standardized, and accepted almost everywhere.

At myCOI our tools recognize the ACORD forms and more; our machines are taught to scan and understand the values in many of the most important fields, and to check those values against your standards for certificates of insurance and coverage. Our expert insurance team backs that technology up: with our Concierge service, a human is involved in every certificate review.

Tracking certificates of insurance is a critical component of risk management for any business, in any industry, that works with third parties like contractors, subcontractors, or other vendors. You literally can’t afford to not do this right: it opens your company up to risk you shouldn’t have to carry. But as your company grows, and receives and has to track more and more certificates, it can quickly scale past what a small team and reasonably manage.

If you’re on your company’s risk management team, the very last thing you want to deal with is your counsel bringing you an insurance claim or a lawsuit that should have properly been covered by your third party’s insurance, but wasn’t, because you just didn’t have time to properly review, track, and verify what you were given on a certificate of insurance.

That’s where myCOI comes in.