How to get a Certificate of Insurance for a client contract

A client's procurement team has asked you for a Certificate of Insurance (COI) before they'll execute the contract. You may not have insurance yet, or you may have it but not know how to generate and deliver a certificate.

This guide explains what a COI is, what it needs to contain, and how to get one quickly.

What a Certificate of Insurance actually is

A Certificate of Insurance is a one-page document that summarises your active insurance coverage. It shows:

• The insurer name (the company that holds the risk)
• The insured name and address (you)
• Coverage types and policy numbers
• Coverage limits (e.g., $1M per occurrence, $2M aggregate)
• Effective and expiration dates
• The certificate holder (your client)
• Any additional insured or endorsement notations

A COI does not itself confer insurance coverage — it's evidence that the underlying policies exist. The actual coverage is in the policy documents.

What ACORD 25 means

ACORD 25 is the industry-standard Certificate of Liability Insurance form, maintained by the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD). When a client's procurement team says "send me your COI," they almost always mean an ACORD 25.

Some clients will specify this explicitly: "Please provide an ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance." If they don't specify, send ACORD 25 anyway — it's what their risk management team will be looking for.

What your client will look for

Procurement teams review COIs against their contract requirements. They're specifically checking:

• That the coverage types match what the contract requires (GL, E&O, etc.)
• That the limits meet or exceed what the contract specifies
• That the policy is currently active and will be active on the contract start date
• That their entity is named as the certificate holder
• That their entity is listed as an additional insured (if required)
• That the waiver of subrogation box is checked (if required)
• That the insurer has an acceptable AM Best rating (usually A- or better)

Common reasons COIs get rejected

Having coverage isn't enough — the COI has to be formatted correctly. Common rejection reasons:

• Wrong entity name as certificate holder (exact legal name required)
• Wrong entity name as additional insured
• Limits below the contract requirement (e.g., $500K when $1M is required)
• Policy expired or not yet effective on the contract start date
• Additional insured language not shown on the COI
• Non-standard certificate format (procurement needs ACORD 25)
• Carrier not acceptable (e.g., non-admitted carrier, or AM Best below A-)

How to get a COI if you don't have insurance yet

If you don't have a policy, you need to buy one before you can get a COI. The steps:

• Identify what coverages the contract requires (GL, E&O, limits)
• Get a bindable quote from a carrier
• Bind the policy (activate it)
• Request the COI with the correct certificate holder and endorsement details
• Send the COI to procurement

With a traditional broker, this takes 2–5 business days. Fennel compresses the entire flow to under 10 minutes: upload your MSA → AI extracts requirements → get a quote → bind → COI generated with the correct additional insured → sent directly to procurement's email.

How to get a COI if you already have insurance

If you already have a GL and/or E&O policy, getting a COI for a new client is a matter of:

• Requesting your insurer or broker add the new client as certificate holder
• Adding the additional insured endorsement (if required)
• Generating the ACORD 25 with the correct details
• Delivering it to the client

If you use Fennel, you can do this from the COI tab: select the policy, enter the additional insured name, enter the recipient email(s), and click Send. Fennel generates the ACORD 25 and emails it directly.