Your commercial lease almost certainly requires your tenants to carry insurance and name you as additional insured. The question that decides whether that requirement actually protects you is: has anyone checked the certificate, and is it correct? On most landlord books, the answer is no — and the gaps are exactly the kind that shift a tenant's exposure back onto you.
What a correct certificate shows
| Item | What to verify |
|---|---|
| Additional insured | You named with the correct wording — and on a basis that covers ongoing operations, not "owner only" boilerplate. |
| Limits | GL (and umbrella) limits that actually meet your lease's requirement — not below it. |
| Effective dates | Current, not expired — and tracked so they don't lapse mid-lease. |
| Waiver of subrogation | Endorsed where your lease requires it, so the tenant's carrier can't come back at you. |
| Coverage type | The right coverages for the operation — e.g., liquor liability for a bar tenant. |
The gaps we see most
Wrong additional-insured wording ("owner only," or a form that doesn't extend to ongoing operations); umbrella limits below the lease requirement; policies that expired months ago and were never re-collected; and missing waivers of subrogation. Any one of them quietly moves risk from the tenant's policy onto your LRO.
This is a process, not a one-time check
Certificates expire. Tenants change carriers. Limits drift. Verifying once at lease signing isn't enough — it has to be re-checked at renewal and tracked for lapses. That ongoing discipline is exactly what our tenant certificate workflow handles: we review your tenants' certificates against your lease requirements, flag the gaps (same-day for most), and coordinate with the tenant's agent to fix them.
Highest-stakes tenants
The discipline matters most with higher-hazard tenants — restaurants and bars, fitness operators, anyone with foot traffic and liquor. Those are the certificates most likely to be wrong and most expensive to get wrong.