What this is
What is an insurance expiry review?
What is an insurance expiry review?
An insurance expiry review is a periodic check of every contractor's insurance certificates on file, run to find which ones are approaching or past their expiry date before that lapse becomes a gap in cover on a live site. It is forward-looking: the certificate record confirms what was received, this review asks what is about to run out.
Who carries it out?
Procurement, working from the certificate records already on file rather than re-collecting certificates from scratch. The review is a scan across the contractor base, not a re-verification of each policy's adequacy, which is why it can be run monthly without repeating the work of the certificate record.
How often is it run?
Monthly, as the stated interval, though a contractor placed on site urgently, or a certificate flagged as marginal at collection, can trigger an out-of-cycle check. The interval exists to give enough warning that a renewal can be collected before access is affected, not to catch a lapse after it has already happened.
Scope
When is an insurance expiry review required?
This review reads certificate records that already exist; it does not create or re-verify them. Using it to check whether a certificate is adequate for the risk, or to collect a first certificate from a new contractor, puts the work in the wrong record and leaves this one unable to do the one thing it exists for, which is watching the calendar.
Use this template when
- The monthly interval for reviewing contractor insurance expiry has come round
- A contractor's certificate was flagged as expiring soon at the last review and needs to be tracked to renewal
- A contractor is due on site and their certificate's expiry date needs checking against the work dates
- An incident or audit raises the question of whether any contractor is currently working with lapsed cover
- The Insurance Certificate Record for a contractor needs a forward check run against it
Do not use it for
- Insurance Certificate Record, which holds the certificate itself, its limits and its scope, at the point it was collected
- Workers Compensation Clearance, which confirms standing with the workers compensation authority rather than tracking expiry dates
- Insurance Adequacy Review, which checks that coverage limits and types match the risk, not whether the cover is about to lapse
- Access Revocation Record, which records the act of removing access, rather than the calendar check that triggers it
- Chasing an individual renewal by phone or email, which is the action this review raises, not the review itself
Compliance mapping
Which Contract requirements requirements does this satisfy?
Reviewing expiry is a monitoring discipline set by the contract and by internal governance rather than a regulator, so there is no external clause requiring a monthly cadence specifically. What sets the standard for what counts as enough warning comes from the same instruments that define the cover in the first place, since the obligation to maintain insurance without lapse runs for as long as the contract does, not only at the point it was signed.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| AIA A201-2017, Article 11.1.3 | Contractor to maintain the required insurance in effect without lapse for the duration of the work, not only at the point cover was first evidenced | Expiring policies |
| FIDIC (1999) Conditions of Contract, Clause 18 | Insurance evidence to be maintained and remain available throughout the contract period | Header |
| Standard contract access-suspension clause | Right to suspend site access where required insurance has lapsed | Expiring policies |
| ACORD 25 renewal practice | A renewal is evidenced by a fresh certificate, not an amendment to the expiring one | Expiring policies |
| ISO CG 20 10 Additional Insured endorsement | Additional-insured status must be reconfirmed at renewal rather than assumed to carry over automatically | Expiring policies |
| Standard subcontract flow-down clause | Subcontractor policies to be reviewed on the same expiry cycle as the principal contractor's | Summary |
| Internal governance practice on reminder lead time | A documented reminder period ahead of expiry, long enough for a renewal to be collected before the date arrives | Summary |
What it does not cover
- Insurance Certificate Record, which holds the certificate details at the point it was collected or renewed.
- Workers Compensation Clearance, which is a separate standing check with the compensation authority.
- Insurance Adequacy Review, which judges whether the cover fits the risk, not whether it is about to expire.
- Access Revocation Record, which records that access was actually removed, as distinct from flagging that it should be.
- Contractor Suspension Record, which covers a broader suspension than an insurance lapse alone.
Global
Insurance Expiry Review requirements by country
The obligation to keep insurance current for the life of the contract is close to universal in standard contract forms; what differs is how much warning is customary before a lapse and what the contract does about access once one occurs.
AIA A201-2017, Article 11.1.3
Requires insurance to remain in effect without lapse for the duration stated in the contract, and ACORD renewal certificates are the document market participants use to evidence that continuity.
A US contract that is silent on reminder timing still expects continuity as a contract term, so the review's own reminder lead time is doing work the contract assumes is already happening.
JCT and NEC standard contract insurance clauses
Typically require the contractor to maintain the specified insurances for the duration of the works, with the employer able to insure and recover the cost if the contractor fails to.
The step-in right gives the employer a remedy for a lapse, but only if the lapse is caught before it becomes a live claim, which is what a running review is actually for.
FIDIC (1999) Conditions of Contract, Clause 18
Requires the insurances to be effected and maintained, with evidence available on request throughout the contract period rather than only at the outset.
Contracts built on FIDIC terms leave the monitoring cadence to the parties, so a documented monthly review is a governance choice that fills a gap the contract itself does not specify.
How to complete it
How to complete an insurance expiry review, step by step
The review's fields make the count easy to produce. What makes the review worth running is whether that count changes anyone's behaviour before the expiry date arrives.
Policies expiring within 30 or 90 days, policies already expired, and contractors currently on site with lapsed cover describe three different levels of urgency, and collapsing them into one expiring count buries the one that requires stopping work today under a much larger number that does not.
Chased and received are different states, and a record showing a certificate was chased but not received is still an open gap. The review should track receipt as the closing event, not the act of asking, or a chased item will sit marked as handled indefinitely.
A contractor currently on site with a lapsed policy is uninsured for whatever happens between the lapse and its discovery, and the review exists to make that gap visible before it becomes a claim, not to record it afterwards. Treating suspension as automatic on discovery, rather than a judgement call weighed against how disruptive stopping the work would be, is what makes the rule mean something.
A thirty-day reminder is not enough warning if a contractor's broker routinely takes three weeks to issue a renewal certificate. The lead time should be set against the slowest renewal the contractor base has actually produced, not a round number chosen for convenience.
What auditors find
Most common insurance expiry review findings
Insurance expiry review findings are less about the fields on the form than about whether the review ran often enough, and firmly enough, to make the count mean something.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Review skipped or run late for a period, so a lapse is discovered after it has already happened. | AIA A201-2017, Article 11.1.3 | Run the review on the stated monthly interval regardless of workload, and record the period covered so a gap in the schedule is visible. |
| Renewal certificate shown as chased but never confirmed received. | ACORD 25 renewal practice | Close the item only on a received certificate, not on evidence that a request was sent. |
| Contractor continues working on site after their cover has lapsed. | Standard contract access-suspension clause | Apply the suspension rule as soon as the lapse is confirmed, and record the suspension against the contractor's access record. |
| Reminder lead time shorter than the contractor base's typical renewal turnaround. | Internal governance practice on reminder lead time | Set the lead time against the slowest renewal actually observed, not an arbitrary default. |
| Additional-insured endorsement not reconfirmed on a renewed policy. | ISO CG 20 10 | Treat a renewal as a new certificate to be checked in full, including endorsements, not an extension of the one already accepted. |
| Subcontractor policies not included in the same review cycle as the principal contractor. | Standard subcontract flow-down clause | Add subcontractor certificates to the same expiring-policies list, on the same interval. |
Case in point
Case in point: the review that counted everything except the one that mattered
A site ran its insurance expiry review every month without exception, and the summary consistently reported a manageable number of policies expiring within ninety days. Procurement chased renewals against that list and closed most of them before the expiry date, and the monthly report to the contract owner showed the expiring count trending down over the quarter.
None of those reports separated out the one contractor who was still on site with a policy that had already lapsed three weeks earlier, because the summary rolled expiring, expired and on-site-with-lapsed-cover into a single trend line that looked fine as long as the total count was falling. The gap surfaced only when a different review, run for an unrelated reason, cross-checked site attendance against certificate status. Nothing in the monthly review had been calculated wrong; the field that would have flagged it, contractors on site with lapsed cover specifically, was being completed but was not the number anyone was actually watching.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
3 sections
- Reference
- CON-023
- Archetype
- Review
- Record ID
- IER-2026-000
- Scoring
- Expiring count
- Direction
- High is bad
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- Contract requirements
- Links
- Links Insurance records
- Tags
- Contractor, Governance
- Sections
- 3
- Fields
- 36
- Follow up fields
- 3
- Repeating sections
- 1
- Links out
- 3
Header
10 fieldsReview ID*
Auto sequence. Format IER-2026-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Date and Time*
Completed By*
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Period Covered*
Reviewed By*
Contractors In Scope*
The Gap Is What Matters
A contractor whose cover lapsed for three weeks while working on your site was uninsured for three weeks. Nobody notices until there is a claim.
Expiring policies
Repeats8 fieldsContractor*
Vendor ID*
Format VEN-0000.
Links to FDN-005 Vendor ID
Policy Type*
Expiry Date*
Days Remaining*
Renewal Certificate Received*
- Yes3 pts
- Chased1 pt
- No0 pts
Currently On Site*
- No3 pts
- Yes0 pts
Access Suspended If Lapsed*
- Yes3 pts
- Not applicable3 pts
- No0 pts
Summary
18 fieldsPolicies Expiring Within 30 Days*
Policies Expiring Within 90 Days*
Policies Already Expired*
Contractors On Site With Lapsed Cover*
The number that matters. Anybody in this category stops work today.
Access Suspensions Applied
Certificates Chased
Automatic Reminders In Place*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Reminder Lead Time Days
Process Working*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Action Required*
Raise the action record, then enter its reference here.
- No2 pts
- Yes0 pts
Priority
- High0 pts
- Medium1 pt
- Low3 pts
CAPA ID
Format CAPA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-014 CAPA ID
Action Owner
Next Review Due*
Contract Owner*
Signature*
Procurement*
Second Signature*
CON-023 · record IDs look like IER-2026-000 · Links Insurance records
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
The review produces a count. What actually protects the site is whether that count reaches someone before the expiry date does, and whether the access rule is applied the same way every time.
Runs the expiry scan against the certificate library on the stated interval, and separates expiring, expired and on-site-with-lapsed-cover rather than reporting one blended count.
Reflects a confirmed lapse back onto the vendor's status, so a contractor with lapsed cover shows as restricted wherever their record is viewed, not only on this review.
Watches days remaining and renewal-received status across the contractor base, and raises the access-suspension question the moment a policy on an active site lapses, rather than waiting for the next monthly run.
This template lives in KnowContractor — contractor management. Prequalification, approval, induction, permits and performance.
Meet KnowContractor→Glossary
Insurance Expiry Review definitions and key terms
- Days remaining
- The gap between the review date and the policy's expiry date, used to prioritise which certificates need chasing first.
- Renewal certificate
- A fresh certificate of insurance issued for the new policy period, distinct from and not a substitute for extending the expiring one.
- Lapsed cover
- A period during which a required policy is not in force, whether because it expired or was cancelled, regardless of whether anyone has noticed yet.
- Reminder lead time
- The number of days before expiry that a renewal reminder is raised, set to allow enough time for the certificate to actually arrive.
- Access suspension
- Withdrawing a contractor's right to be on site, applied here as the standing consequence of confirmed lapsed cover.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about insurance expiry review
What is an insurance expiry review?+
A periodic scan of every contractor's insurance certificates on file to find which are approaching or past expiry, giving enough warning that a renewal can be collected before site access is affected.
How is this different from the insurance certificate record?+
The certificate record captures a certificate at the point it was collected or renewed. This review is periodic, forward-looking, and runs across the whole contractor base at once.
What should happen if a contractor's cover lapses while they are on site?+
Access should be suspended as soon as the lapse is confirmed, applied as a standing rule rather than weighed case by case. That contractor was uninsured for however long the lapse ran, whether or not a claim occurred.
How far ahead should the review look?+
Both 30 and 90 day windows give useful staging, but the count that most matters is contractors already expired or on site with lapsed cover, since those describe an active gap rather than a future one.
What if a renewal has been chased but not received?+
Treat it as open. A chased item is a request in progress, not a closed gap, and should stay flagged until the renewal certificate is on file and checked.
Can the review interval be shorter than monthly?+
Yes. The interval is a governance choice, and a larger or higher-turnover contractor base may need a shorter cycle to give the same practical warning.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Contractor Onboarding and Management
Contractor Prequalification Questionnaire
Collects a contractor's safety, insurance, training and performance information before they are approved
Contractor Safety Statistics Review
Reviews a contractor's injury rates, citations and experience modifier over recent years
Contractor Risk Classification
Classifies a contractor by the risk of the work they do, from low risk services to high risk construction
Contractor Approval Record
Records the decision to approve a contractor to work on site
Contractor Safety Program Review
Reviews the contractor's own written safety programme against your requirements
Subcontractor Declaration
Records any subcontractors a contractor intends to use
More in Insurance
Insurance Certificate Record
Holds the contractor's insurance certificates with coverage amounts and expiry dates
Workers Compensation Clearance
Confirms the contractor is in good standing with the workers compensation authority
Insurance Adequacy Review
Checks that coverage limits and types match the risk of the work being done
Indemnity and Contract Record
Holds the signed contract and its safety, indemnity and liability terms
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- AIA A201-2017, General Conditions of the Contract for Construction, Article 11 (Insurance and Bonds)
- FIDIC (1999) Conditions of Contract, Clause 18 (Insurance)
- ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance, standard market form
- ISO Commercial General Liability endorsement CG 20 10 (Additional Insured)
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.