You won the job, and then someone emailed you a page of insurance requirements. Here’s how to read it.
What a certificate is — and isn’t
A certificate of insurance (usually an ACORD 25) is a one-page summary proving you carry coverage on the date it was issued. It grants nothing. It changes nothing. It’s evidence.
Which is why the requirements sheet usually asks for more than a certificate: it asks for endorsements that actually modify your policy. A certificate saying “additional insured” without the endorsement behind it is a piece of paper that will not help anyone at claim time. Good risk managers check. We issue them properly the first time.
The four things they’re usually asking for
Additional insured. The GC wants to be covered under your policy for liability arising out of your work. This is a real endorsement, it has a form number, and some policies won’t add one at all. Ongoing operations and completed operations are separate — many contracts require both, and a lot of certificates only carry the first.
Waiver of subrogation. You give up your carrier’s right to come after them to recover what it paid. Carriers charge for this, usually modestly. It has to be endorsed on, not just typed onto a certificate.
Primary and non-contributory. Your policy pays first and doesn’t ask theirs to chip in. Also an endorsement.
Limits. Often $1M per occurrence / $2M aggregate for general liability, $1M commercial auto, and statutory workers’ comp with a $500,000 or $1M employer’s liability. Umbrella requirements above that are common on larger jobs.
Where people get stuck
A personal auto policy can’t do commercial work. If you’re hauling tools and materials to jobs, a personal policy may deny the claim outright — and it certainly can’t name an additional insured. This is the single most common gap we find on small contractors.
Workers’ comp when you have no employees. Louisiana lets certain owners exclude themselves, and then the GC requires comp anyway. There are ways to satisfy this — a ghost policy, or being covered as an employee — and which one works depends on how the contract is written. Send us the contract.
Waiting until Monday morning. Endorsements take underwriter approval. Certificates take minutes; the coverage behind them doesn’t. If a job starts next week, send us the requirements now.
What to send us
- The requirements page itself. Not a summary — the actual page. It names the exact endorsements.
- The certificate holder’s exact legal name and address. As they wrote it. “ABC Construction” and “ABC Construction of Louisiana, LLC” are not interchangeable on a certificate.
- Who needs to be an additional insured — often the GC and the property owner, sometimes a lender.
- When you need it.
Send that to us and in most cases you’ll have the certificate the same business day. Clients can also request one directly from the client portal any time, and it comes into the same queue.
We write a lot of contractors. We know what a GC or a parish is going to ask for before they ask, and we’d rather build the policy to meet it than paper over it later.
This is general information about how coverage typically works in Louisiana, not advice about your specific policy. Policy language, carrier practice, and state law all change, and yours may differ from what's described here. Your policy and its endorsements are the contract. For an answer that applies to you, send us your declarations page or call (225) 347-4185.Red Stick Insurance Agency · Louisiana licence #1260833 · NPN 22128563.