Additional insured: what the status actually gives you

An additional insured is a party other than the policyholder who is given rights under that policy — most often a client, landlord, lender or general contractor added to a contractor’s liability policy for claims arising out of that contractor’s work. The point is direct access: rather than suing the contractor and hoping they are solvent and insured, the additional insured can seek defence and indemnity from the contractor’s insurer.

That is a genuinely valuable position, and it is also the one most often assumed rather than verified. Requiring additional insured status in a contract, seeing a sentence about it typed into a certificate, and actually holding the endorsement are three different states, and only the third is worth anything when a claim arrives.

Where additional insured status comes from

• A policy endorsement naming the party or describing a category of parties. This is the only thing that creates the status.
• The endorsement form number matters: the widely used construction forms differ in whether they cover ongoing operations only, or ongoing and completed operations.
• A blanket endorsement covers anyone the insured has agreed in a written contract to add — convenient, and it means the contract wording becomes the operative document.
• The scope is normally limited to liability arising out of the named insured’s work, not to your own independent negligence.
• It is separate from a waiver of subrogation, which stops the insurer recovering from you afterwards, and from primary and non-contributory wording, which decides whose policy pays first.

Completed operations is the clause that gets forgotten

A great deal of construction liability surfaces after the work is done — a roof leaks, a fitting fails, damage appears two years later. An endorsement covering ongoing operations only ends when the work ends, so the additional insured position evaporates exactly when the typical claim appears. If your exposure continues after handover, the contract needs to require completed operations cover and the endorsement needs to provide it, and the policy has to still be in force when the claim is made where cover is written on a claims-made basis.

Ask for the endorsement, the schedule of forms and, where the amount at stake justifies it, the policy itself. A certificate mentioning additional insured status is evidence that a broker typed a sentence, and nothing more.

What it does not do

It does not cover your own sole negligence — and in several jurisdictions anti-indemnity statutes prevent it from doing so even if the contract tries. It does not increase the limits: you are sharing the contractor’s aggregate with every other additional insured on that policy, which is why a per-project aggregate is worth requiring on large jobs. It does not survive cancellation, and you may not be told about cancellation. And it does not replace your own insurance; it supplements it.

Keeping the evidence

What you need on file per vendor is the certificate, the endorsements naming you, the schedule of forms, the contract clause that required them, and the dates. Ettex Records holds that per vendor and per project with the review dates visible; the certificate itself is covered in acord 25, and the expiry discipline that keeps it current in certificate of insurance tracking.

Plainly: not insurance or legal advice. Endorsement forms, anti-indemnity rules and what a contract can validly require vary by jurisdiction and change; your broker and your lawyer decide what to ask for, and this is about making sure you can prove you got it.