A client sends a seventy page agreement and asks what insurance they need. The answer is in there, but it is not in one place, and the sections that change the answer most are rarely the ones headed insurance. Turning that document into a working checklist is the job.
Updated September 2026.
The four places requirements hide
The insurance article. The obvious one. Lines, limits, endorsements. It is usually accurate and almost never complete.
The indemnity clause. Frequently adds an obligation broader than the insurance article supports. Where the indemnity reaches further than the coverage, the gap sits with the client and nobody notices until a claim.
The schedule or exhibit at the back. Often where the actual limits live, and often amended separately from the body of the agreement.
Amendments and change orders. The original agreement says one thing, the second amendment changed it, and the version in the client's folder is the original.
What to pull out
- Lines of coverage required, and whether any must be on a specific form
- Limits, per occurrence and aggregate, and whether they must be dedicated
- Additional insured, which form, ongoing or completed operations or both
- Waiver of subrogation, primary and non-contributory, cross-liability
- The exact legal name and address for the certificate holder
- Notice of cancellation terms and who must be notified
- Term, including option years, and whether coverage must survive completion
- Any requirement for carrier rating or admitted status
Record the page reference for each. A requirement without a citation is something someone will have to find again the next time it is questioned.
Why it gets done badly
Not because anyone doubts it matters. Because reading a long agreement carefully is a task that expands to fill an afternoon, and renewal season does not have afternoons in it. So the requirements get skimmed for the familiar phrases, waiver of subrogation, hold harmless, primary and non-contributory, and whatever is unusual about this particular contract goes unread.
The unusual clause is the one that produces the problem, precisely because it did not match the pattern.
Turning it into something usable
The output should be a checklist a person can act on: each requirement, its page reference, and whether the current coverage meets it. That is what makes the difference between an extraction and an answer, because the extracted list is only useful next to what the client actually has.
For reference on the time this takes: the median across a nine week pilot at Westland Insurance was one minute twenty-three seconds to read a full document, with every value returned quoting its source page.