Free tool
COI Deficiency Checker
Upload an ACORD 25 certificate of insurance and see exactly what’s wrong in about ten seconds — limits below the standard minimums, missing or description-only Additional Insured, absent Waiver of Subrogation, expired coverage. No login required for 5 free checks per month.
Same parsing and rules engine as the paid Bindly Compliance platform.
Checker
What a certificate of insurance is supposed to prove
A Certificate of Insurance — almost always the ACORD 25 form — is the one-page summary a broker issues to prove a business carries coverage. It is not the policy; it is evidence of the policy. When you require a vendor, subcontractor, tenant, or hauler to “send a COI,” this is the document you get back. It lists the insurers and their NAIC codes, each line of coverage (General Liability, Automobile Liability, Workers’ Compensation, Umbrella/Excess), the limits on each line, the policy numbers, the effective and expiration dates, the certificate holder (you), and — in the rows of checkboxes and the Description of Operations box — which endorsements are attached.
The whole point of collecting a COI is risk transfer: if the vendor causes a loss, their insurance — not yours — should respond. But that only works if the certificate actually reflects the coverage your contract requires. A certificate that looks fine at a glance routinely hides defects that void the protection you thought you had. The job of a COI review is to catch those defects before you sign, before the load tenders, before the tenant moves in — not after a claim, when the gap becomes your problem.
That review is tedious and easy to get wrong by eye. The limits are in different boxes for each coverage line. The endorsement that matters might be a four-character form number buried in a checkbox, or it might be missing entirely while the Description of Operations cheerfully says “Additional Insured per written contract” — language that, on its own, extends no coverage at all. This tool reads the certificate the way a careful compliance reviewer would and tells you, in plain English, what doesn’t meet the standard.
The defects that get missed (and why they cost real money)
1. Description-only Additional Insured
This is the most expensive defect in the industry. A certificate names you as an Additional Insured only in the free-text Description of Operations box, with no CG 20 10 (or blanket CG 20 33 / CG 20 38) endorsement attached. The description box is not part of the insurance contract — only an attached endorsement actually extends coverage to you. When a claim comes, the carrier denies the additional-insured tender and the loss lands on your own policy. The checker reads endorsement attachment, so it flags description-only AI instead of treating the mention as a pass.
2. Limits below the standard minimums
General Liability of $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 general aggregate are the de-facto floor in nearly every commercial contract. A certificate showing $500,000 per occurrence, or showing an each-occurrence limit with no aggregate at all, is a real shortfall. The checker compares every limit it reads against the baseline and never fabricates a number that wasn’t on the certificate — if the aggregate line is blank, that’s reported as a finding, not silently assumed to be twice the occurrence limit.
3. Missing Waiver of Subrogation
Many contracts require the vendor’s insurer to waive its right to come after you to recover what it paid on a claim — the Waiver of Subrogation, typically CG 24 04 on the GL policy (and WC 00 03 13 on Workers’ Comp). Without the endorsement attached, the waiver isn’t in force. The checker looks for the endorsement, not just a mention.
4. Expired or about-to-expire coverage
A certificate is a snapshot. The coverage it evidences expires on a date printed on the form, and a cert collected six months ago may be describing a policy that has already lapsed. The checker reads the expiration date and flags coverage that has expired or has fewer than 30 days remaining — your cue to request a renewal certificate before the gap opens.
5. Endorsement edition-date and filing confusion
ISO endorsements are often printed with their edition date appended (“CG 20 10 04 13”), and FMCSA financial- responsibility filings (BMC-91, MCS-82) are sometimes mistaken for policy endorsements. A naive review fails good certificates on the first and passes bad ones on the second. The engine behind this checker normalizes edition dates and refuses to count a SAFER filing as a policy endorsement — the same accuracy fixes that run in the paid product.
How to read the result
Start with the headline status. Compliant means nothing tripped the baseline. “Review recommended” means there are warnings or advisories but no hard failure. Deficient means at least one blocking issue — a limit shortfall that essentially every contract would reject. Expired means a policy line is past its expiration date.
Triage by severity, not by count. A blocking finding (GL below $1M/$2M) matters more than three advisories. Fix the blockers with the broker first — usually by requesting a corrected certificate or a higher limit — then work down through warnings and advisories.
Take the endorsement findings to the broker directly. “Add a CG 20 10 naming us as Additional Insured” or “attach CG 24 04 for Waiver of Subrogation” is a concrete, actionable request a broker can turn around quickly. A description-only mention is the broker’s cue that the endorsement was never actually added.
Remember what the baseline can’t see. The free checker doesn’t know your contract. If your agreement requires $2M/$4M GL, a $5M umbrella, a specific certificate-holder address, or a particular endorsement edition, the baseline won’t flag a cert that meets the floor but misses your specific terms. That contract-specific enforcement is exactly what the paid platform’s custom rulesets do.
Five checks a month is the free tier. If you’re verifying certificates across many vendors, or you want your own rules enforced continuously with automatic renewal chasing, that’s the moment to start a trial of the full product.
Frequently asked questions
- What is an ACORD 25 certificate of insurance?
- The ACORD 25 — formally the Certificate of Liability Insurance — is the standardized one-page form a broker issues to prove a business carries coverage. It lists the insurers, each policy's type (General Liability, Automobile Liability, Workers' Compensation, Umbrella/Excess), the limits, the effective and expiration dates, the certificate holder, and any attached endorsements. It is the document a property manager, general contractor, shipper, or freight broker collects from every vendor to confirm the vendor's insurance meets the contract. This checker reads that form and scores it.
- What does this checker actually verify?
- It evaluates the certificate against a universal best-practices baseline: General Liability each-occurrence of at least $1M and general aggregate of at least $2M (the two minimums almost no counterparty waives), products/completed-operations aggregate, Automobile Liability combined single limit, Employers' Liability limits, whether an Additional Insured endorsement (CG 20 10 or a blanket equivalent) and a Waiver of Subrogation (CG 24 04) are actually attached, whether the certificate holder is named as an Additional Insured by endorsement rather than in the Description of Operations text only, and whether the policy has at least 30 days of coverage remaining. It does NOT check carrier financial strength (AM Best) or admitted status — those need a carrier table, which is part of the paid product.
- Why does 'description-only Additional Insured' get flagged?
- It's the single most common — and most expensive — COI defect. When a certificate names your company as an Additional Insured only in the free-text Description of Operations box, with no CG 20 10 / CG 20 33 / CG 20 38 endorsement actually attached to the policy, you are very likely NOT an Additional Insured at all. The description box is not part of the policy contract; only an attached endorsement extends coverage. If a claim arises, the insurer can deny the additional-insured tender and you discover the gap exactly when you need the coverage. The checker reads the endorsement detail and flags description-only AI as a finding, not a pass.
- Is this the same as the paid Bindly Compliance product?
- Same parsing and rules engine; different ruleset. The free checker scores against a fixed best-practices baseline and runs one certificate at a time. The paid platform lets you define your own requirements per vendor or per contract (your specific limits, your required endorsement forms, certificate-holder wording, carrier AM Best minimums, admitted-state requirements), verifies them on every vendor automatically, chases renewals before they lapse, and produces audit-ready packets. The free tool answers 'is this one cert reasonable?'; the platform answers 'are all my vendors continuously compliant with my rules?'
- How many free checks do I get?
- Five checks per email address per month. The limit resets on a rolling 30-day window. If you need more — or you're verifying certificates across many vendors regularly — that's the signal to start a free trial of the full platform, which removes the cap and adds your own ruleset, renewal automation, and a vendor portal.
- Do you store the certificate I upload?
- The uploaded PDF is stored in encrypted object storage solely so we can investigate abuse and support issues; it is never publicly accessible and is reachable only through short-lived signed links by Bindly staff. We log a hash of your email (not the address itself) against the check for rate-limiting. We don't sell or share the document or your data. If you'd like a certificate removed, contact [email protected].
- What file formats are supported?
- PDF only. The checker is tuned for the ACORD 25 form as a PDF — the same format brokers issue. If you have a scanned image or a photo of a certificate, save or export it as a PDF first. Files must be under 10 MB; a real ACORD 25 is almost always well under 1 MB.
- Can I trust the result for a real compliance decision?
- Use it as a fast triage, not a legal opinion. The parser is the same production engine Bindly uses, and the rules are accurate, but a free baseline can't know your contract's specific requirements (some contracts require $2M/$4M GL, an umbrella, a specific certificate-holder address, or particular endorsement editions). Treat a clean result as 'meets the common minimums' and a deficient result as 'here are concrete issues to resolve with the broker.' For contract-specific enforcement, configure your own ruleset in the paid product.
More free tools
Bindly Compliance publishes a free tool per common COI and DOT/FMCSA question. Each runs free, no login required.