96% of insurance programs require a maximum 30-day written notice of cancellation, with the remaining 4% requiring 60-day notice and no program in the dataset accepting more than 60 days (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
2026 Benchmark Report
The 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmarking Report
How procurement and risk teams set insurance requirements across the cross-industry aggregate, programs managing 10,000-plus vendors, and five industry breakdowns.
Methodology
This benchmark documents the insurance requirements that procurement, risk, and compliance teams place on their suppliers. The underlying dataset includes 291 requestor insurance requirement sets contributed by organizations operating across multiple industries.
The cross-industry aggregate view in this report (presented as the Risk Tier Benchmark) reports the typical requirements observed across all 291 requirement sets, organized by risk tier (Low, Moderate, High, Towing, Professional, Pollution, and Liquor).
Industry-specific breakdowns describe the requirements observed in the subsets of the 291 contributed by organizations operating in each industry segment: Property Management and Commercial Real Estate; Film, Media, and Entertainment; Retail and Production; Construction; and Commercial Transportation.
A separate vendor-volume breakdown describes the requirements observed in the subset of contributing organizations that manage 10,000 or more vendors, isolating how programs at scale structure their requirements differently from the rest of the dataset.
Adoption percentages reported in this benchmark refer to the share of programs in a given cut (cross-industry aggregate, industry-specific breakdown, or vendor-volume breakdown) that require a given coverage or endorsement at a specified risk tier. Coverage limits reported as universal apply across all 291 underlying requirement sets unless otherwise noted.
This report is published as a public benchmark for procurement, risk management, and operations professionals working in supplier compliance. It is not a substitute for legal, insurance, or risk advisory services.
Key Findings at a Glance
Universal coverage floors
Workers Compensation Statutory limits are required in 100% of insurance programs in the benchmark across all industries, tiers, and program sizes, with alternative requirements applied for vendors operating in monopolistic workers compensation states (North Dakota, Ohio, Washington, and Wyoming), where programs either require Stop Gap coverage on the General Liability policy or accept the monopolistic state-fund policy regardless of dollar amount. Exceptions are frequently granted to solo operators who do not have employees. (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
Auto liability specifics
Among programs that allow split limits, 69% use $500K/$500K/$500K, 12% use $1M/$1M/$1M, and 19% use $100K/$300K/$100K. In programs allowing split limits, the most common pairs are $1M in Combined Single Limit OR $500K/$500K/$500K in split limits. The second most common is $500K in Combined Single Limit OR $100K/$300K/$100K in split limits (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
Umbrella and excess
Where umbrella coverage is required, 60% of programs set the limit at $2M and 25% set it at $1M, and 15% requiring greater than $2M. The exception to this requirement is if General Liability coverage exceeds the combination required for both General Liability and Excess/Umbrella Liability combined. (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
Endorsement adoption
Ongoing Operations endorsement program requirements are 23% at Moderate Risk and 72% at High Risk in the cross-industry mix, identifying this endorsement as a high-risk-tier marker rather than a baseline requirement, most often used in project-heavy programs (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
Completed Operations endorsement program requirements reach 81% at High Risk in the cross-industry mix and 84% in property management specifically, making it the most consistently required operations endorsement at high-risk tiers, heavily concentrated in project-heavy programs (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
Program design and structural
75% of organizations contributing to the dataset operate one to three insurance requirement tiers across their supplier base, while 25% maintain four or more tiers segmented by risk level, work type, or specialty exposure (Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark, n=291).
What's in the Report
The Cross-Industry Aggregate: Insurance Requirements by Risk Tier
The industry-agnostic aggregate and averaged benchmark of 291 program insurance requirement sets in the dataset, organized by risk tier. The benchmark describes the typical requirements observed across the full dataset for each of the seven risk-tier categories used by contributing organizations: Low, Moderate, High, Towing & Auto, Professional, Pollution & Projects, and Liquor.
Insurance Requirements for Programs Managing 10,000-Plus Vendors
This breakdown isolates the requirement programs operated by organizations managing 10,000 or more vendors, distinguishing how programs at this scale structure their requirements from the rest of the dataset. The pattern is concentrated in severity coverages including umbrella, Workers Compensation, and Crime, while primary General Liability remains at the dataset's standard floor.
Industry Breakdowns: How Insurance Requirements Differ by Industry
The five industry breakdowns below describe the subsets of the 291 dataset by industry segment. Each breakdown describes the typical requirements observed for that industry.
Download the Full Report
Download the full 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmarking Report
Every coverage line, every risk tier, all nine benchmarking tables, and the endorsement adoption breakdowns. Free download, no spam.
You'll get immediate access on the next page, plus an emailed copy you can forward to a colleague.
About This Data
The Certificial 2026 Insurance Requirements Benchmark documents 291 program insurance requirements across multiple industries. The dataset is presented in this report as a cross-industry aggregate (Risk Tier Benchmark), as a vendor-volume breakdown isolating contributing organizations that manage 10,000 or more vendors, and as five industry-specific breakdowns for Property Management and Commercial Real Estate, Film, Media, and Entertainment, Retail and Production, Construction, and Commercial Transportation.
Coverage limits, endorsement adoption percentages, and specialty coverage requirements are reported as documented in the source requirement sets. Where adoption percentages are reported, the denominator is the count of programs in the specified cut at the specified risk tier.
Data current as of April 2026.
About Certificial
Certificial is the Smart COI platform for procurement, risk, and compliance teams managing supplier insurance compliance at scale. Smart COIs replace static PDF certificates of insurance with a live, continuously verified data connection between the supplier's insurance agent and the requestor's compliance dashboard, enabling real-time visibility into coverage changes, cancellations, and renewals across the supplier base. Certificial is used by property management, construction, retail, transportation, and enterprise procurement programs to reduce supplier onboarding friction, eliminate compliance gaps, and meet audit requirements without adding headcount.