KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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Additional Insured discussion from experts
August 21, 2026
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Additional Insured discussion from experts
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We have already heard from insurance brokers expert in the alarm industry opine on the additional insured topic. Today and tomorrow two more expert brokers offer explanation on the issue. You can assume that any agreement presented to you by your subscriber, its agent or a general contractor, will require you to obtain insurance and name them as additional insureds. These provisions must be reviewed and usually modified to protect you. The Concierge Program provides a free half hour each month for these reviews and negotiations if necessary [and it usually does require one meeting with the subscriber or its counsel]. If you have more than one contract review a month Concierge Clients get a discount on the legal fees for the review and negotiations.
The topic can be confusing and merits all the attention it's getting. Support the expert brokers who participate in this forum and are listed on The Alarm Exchange, they can be depended upon. Tomorrow we hear from another broker.
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Ken,
Good questions in your August 6, 2026 email about additional insured coverage. Here are observations and answers from someone whose office insures hundreds of alarm companies and issues tens of thousands of additional insured certificates for them each year.
Insurance brokers and agents typically only have authority to issue certificates that reflect the coverages *already present in the insured’s policy*. Decades ago (80’s & early 90’s), when getting an “Additional Insured” certificate wasn’t as common of a requirement, this often meant that the broker had to request the insurer issue an individual “Additional Insured Endorsement” for each entity requesting from their policyholder. This would often take 1 to several days for the insurer to do, which could cause jobs to be held up. The insurer (not the broker) would also often charge a premium to issue the additional insured endorsement (anywhere from $50-$500, depending on the wording requested). As additional insured requests became more common, these obstacles became more problematic until the insurance-buying community made enough noise about it that the insurance industry came up with a solution: start including a Blanket Additional Insured (AI) Endorsement in every policy, which basically stated that “if the insured enters into a written contract with a 3rd party, and that contract states that the insured is required to provide Additional Insured coverage to the 3rd party, then such coverage is hereby provided”. Because these Blanket AI Endorsements were then automatically built into the policies, there was no additional charge for getting AI coverage, and there was no more waiting on the carrier to issue the endorsement: the broker could immediately issue any requested AI certificate and attach the existing blanket AI endorsement, and the insured and their customer could see for themselves the exact detail of coverage provided to the additional insured, and typically would then call it good.
But that’s for “standard Additional Insured wording”, and as you point out, sometimes that’s not enough when the alarm company’s customer wants more, like the AI coverage being non-contributory and primary (making the alarm company’s insurance take the legal hit first, even when it’s a matter of mixed contributory negligence between them and their customer). In those cases, the broker either has to get the insurance company to manually add a specific endorsement expanding the AI coverage to match, or get a “Blanket Primary & Non-Contributory” endorsement added to the policy that says such coverage is automatically afforded any time the insured enters into a written contract that requires it.
Insurance companies HATE providing this type of blanket AI coverage because they know it opens them up to all sorts of additional liability, but they have been forced to by their customers because they’re told its an absolute requirement and they either do it or lose the business. I can tell you that on average, at least out here in California, that on average an alarm company will require around 30-50 additional insured certificates for every $1M of revenues their business does. I don’t know how many of those certificates are on jobs where they’ve gotten their standard alarm contract signed, but that should indicate how common it is that they are also signing a customer’s contract that requires the AI insurance.
It’s worth noting that additional insured certificate requests usually only arise when an alarm company is doing B-to-B work, whether their customer is a business, or they are working residential through a general contractor or property manager: It’s mainly commercial entities that require this coverage, and they do so through their contracts.
So the key to controlling this risk is not in controlling the insurance certificates or policy, because nowadays the policies usually have all the Blanket AI endorsements automatically included. The key is in controlling the contractual language that the alarm company agrees to: we frequently advise our customers to check with their attorney and try to negotiate out of any heavy-handed insurance requirements they see in prospective contracts, but most of the time it boils down to them asking us, “how much extra will this coverage cost me now”. If the answer is “nothing” then they usually don’t push back on the contract language, often citing that these are “standard requirements that we run into all the time”, and that it’s “just a part of doing business”, and “that’s what I have insurance for”.
The contracts their customers want them to sign are complex and designed to put all the risk back on the alarm company. We tell our clients that their customer’s contracts were written by lawyers with the goal of protecting their companies, not yours, and they’re not easily understood or negotiated by a non-lawyer, so we strongly encourage running these by their attorney before signing: only legally trained eyes can see all the traps.
I don’t know how many of them follow up with their attorney after that, probably not as many as should. Hopefully more will after reading this.
Thanks again for facilitating this platform for so long, it’s a huge value to the industry.
Thanks,
Larry St John, CIC, CRM
Lic.# 0B38913/0D60747
Eclipse Marketing & Insurance Services
e: lstjohn@eclipseinsurance.com
v: 707.469.6776 x102 | f: 707.469.8072
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com
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