Vendor Insurance Requirements Template (Free One-Pager)
A free, editable one-page vendor insurance requirements template — tiered limits, the four required endorsements, and delivery standards — ready to attach to service agreements and send to vendors' agents.
Travis
Diamond Flooring Starts Next Week
2 coverage gaps—we've reached out and resolved this before work begins.
- Emailed Vendor
- Verified with Insurance Broker
- Updated new COI in system
Diamond Flooring starts next week. Travis finds that the general liability limit needs an increase and the additional insured is not listed, emails the vendor, verifies coverage with the insurance broker, and updates the new COI in the system before work begins.
A vendor insurance requirements template is the one-page exhibit you attach to service agreements and hand to every new vendor — so the requirements exist in writing (which is what triggers blanket endorsements), the vendor's insurance agent gets specifics instead of guesses, and your team verifies incoming certificates against a document rather than memory.
Download the editable template (.docx) →
What the template contains
A three-tier requirements grid. Low-risk vendors, standard trades, and high-hazard work each get their own column of limits — GL, auto, workers' comp, umbrella — so one document covers the landscaper and the roofer without over- or under-requiring either. Tier definitions are included; the reasoning behind each tier lives here.
The four endorsement requirements, written to be verifiable. Additional insured status (ongoing and completed operations, by attached endorsement, exact entity names), primary and noncontributory wording, waiver of subrogation (GL and workers' comp), and notice of cancellation. Each is phrased with the two details that make verification possible later: by endorsement, forms attached — because the description box amends nothing.
The delivery standard. Certificate plus all endorsement pages, before first work order and at least ten days before each renewal, to a named email address. This single paragraph is what turns the exhibit from a statement of preferences into a checkable gate.
A fill-in block for your entities. Exact legal names of the owner and management entities per property — the most common verification failure is an endorsement naming the wrong LLC, and it starts with requirements documents that say "Owner" instead of a name.
How to use it
Fill in your entities and tier assignments, have your broker sanity-check the limits against your portfolio's risk (and your attorney confirm it matches your service agreement's insurance section — the contract controls), then attach it to every new agreement and send it with every COI request. When certificates come back, your team — or Travis — verifies against this document, line by line.
One usage note from the field: resist the urge to customize per vendor beyond the tier assignment. The template's value is consistency — one standard, applied portfolio-wide, is enforceable and auditable; forty bespoke requirement sets are neither.
FAQ
Is this legally binding? The template becomes binding when incorporated into your service agreement (typically as an exhibit referenced in the insurance section). On its own it's a communication tool — a very useful one, since agents issue against exactly what's written.
What limits does the template use? Standard commercial baselines — $1M/$2M GL across tiers, auto and umbrella scaling from "if applicable" to $5M+ by tier. They're starting values; your broker calibrates.
Do vendors push back on requirements documents? Far less than on vague requests, because their agent can price and issue against specifics in one pass. Most "vendor pushback" is actually agent confusion — this document is the cure.
Requirements are the easy half. Verifying every certificate against them — and chasing what's missing — is Travis's half. Free plan at tightrope.ai/coi.