The Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others to Us form is an insurance endorsement you request from your carrier to stop it from suing a third party to recover money it paid on your claim. To complete it, you give your agent the full legal name of the party you’re protecting, the project or premises address, your active policy number, the contract’s effective and completion dates, and any specific wording the contract requires. Your agent submits the request to underwriting, and the carrier issues an endorsement page attached to your policy. The form appears most often in construction contracts and commercial leases, where the other party wants assurance that your insurer won’t come after them if something goes wrong.
Decide Between Blanket and Scheduled First
Before you touch the form, decide which version you need. This choice controls how the form is filled in, what it costs, and how much paperwork you’ll do later.
A scheduled endorsement names a specific person or organization. You enter their exact legal name, the project address, and a description of the work. Every new contract partner means going back to your carrier for another scheduled endorsement. That’s fine for one or two contracts a year and tedious for anyone signing more.
A blanket endorsement skips individual names. It covers any entity you’re required to protect under a written contract executed before a loss occurs. If your subcontract with a general contractor requires a waiver of subrogation, the blanket endorsement satisfies it automatically without a separate filing for each project. Blanket coverage costs more upfront but usually saves money and prevents the gap that opens when you forget to schedule a party before work starts.
Information to Have Ready Before You Contact Your Agent
Pull the insurance requirements section from your signed contract first. That section tells you what the other party expects, and getting it wrong is the fastest way to delay a project.
- The full legal name of the protected party, exactly as it appears in the contract. “ABC Construction LLC” and “ABC Construction” are different entities in a legal dispute, and a mismatch can void the endorsement.
- The project or premises address — the physical location where the work will happen or the property being leased. Some carriers also want a brief project description.
- Your active policy number. The endorsement attaches to a specific policy term, so confirm you’re referencing the current period.
- Contract effective and completion dates, so your agent can align the endorsement period with the underlying agreement.
- Any specific language the contract mandates. Some contracts require the waiver to apply to “all operations” or reference a particular job number. If the wording doesn’t match, the requesting party will send it back.
Construction and commercial real estate contracts often require more than a waiver of subrogation. You may also need to name the other party as an additional insured and provide primary and noncontributory status on your policy. Check for all three at once so your agent can bundle the requests and avoid multiple rounds of paperwork.
The Right Form Number for Each Policy
The concept is the same across every insurance line, but each policy type uses its own ISO or NCCI form. Using the wrong form number is a common reason requests get bounced back.
Commercial General Liability
CGL policies use ISO form CG 24 04 to waive the carrier’s recovery rights for third-party bodily injury and property damage claims. If a visitor is hurt on a job site and your insurer pays the claim, this endorsement blocks the insurer from turning around and suing the property owner or general contractor. The current edition is dated 12/19, though older editions may still appear on some policies. The schedule section is where you enter the name of the person or organization and indicate whether coverage is blanket or applies only to a named party.
Workers’ Compensation
Workers’ compensation policies use NCCI form WC 00 03 13. The carrier agrees not to enforce its right of recovery against the person or organization named in the schedule, but only to the extent the insured performs work under a written contract requiring the waiver. The schedule takes the name of each protected party, the endorsement effective date, the policy number, and the premium charged for the endorsement.
Commercial Auto
Business auto policies use ISO form CA 04 44 to waive subrogation rights for vehicle-related claims. The endorsement applies across business auto, business auto physical damage, garage, motor carrier, and truckers coverage forms. As with the CGL version, the waiver applies only when a written contract executed before the accident requires it. One limit worth noting: the endorsement excludes losses caused by the sole negligence of the party being protected.
How to Submit the Request
Most policyholders submit through their insurance agent, who forwards the request to the carrier’s underwriting department. If your carrier offers a digital portal, you can often enter the entity name, project description, and requested form number directly into a queue that triggers underwriting review. When no portal exists, email the underwriter a copy of the signed contract along with the form number you need.
Processing usually takes one to three business days, and straightforward blanket endorsements often come back the same day. Once underwriting approves, the carrier issues a formal endorsement page confirming the modification. Your agent then generates a revised Certificate of Insurance showing the waiver is active and sends it to the requesting party.
One point that catches people off guard: a Certificate of Insurance is a summary document, not the endorsement itself. The certificate confirms coverage exists but doesn’t contain the actual waiver language. If the other party’s risk manager asks for a copy of the endorsement page, that’s a separate document your agent has to provide.
Get It in Place Before a Loss
The waiver has to be active before a loss occurs. If you sign a contract requiring a waiver of subrogation but never follow through with your carrier, and then a claim happens, your insurer has no obligation to honor a waiver it never agreed to. Worse, some policies contain provisions that void coverage if the policyholder enters into a subrogation waiver without the carrier’s consent. Contact your agent before signing whenever possible, or immediately after, to avoid a gap that could leave you exposed.
What It Costs
Carriers charge for these endorsements in different ways depending on policy type and whether you choose blanket or scheduled coverage. Commercial general liability waivers are typically a flat fee per endorsement or a small percentage of the policy premium. Workers’ compensation waivers are usually priced as a percentage of the premium associated with the relevant payroll. Blanket waivers cost more upfront than scheduled ones but often save money over a policy year if you’re adding multiple parties.
The direct cost is usually modest. The indirect cost on workers’ compensation is not. When your carrier waives its right to recover claim payments from a negligent third party, those unrecovered losses stay on your loss history. Your experience modification rate, the multiplier that adjusts your workers’ compensation premium based on your claims track record, absorbs the full cost of those claims. A few large unrecovered claims can push your experience modifier up and increase your premiums for three years or more. That’s the hidden cost of waiving subrogation, and it rarely surfaces in contract negotiations.
Mistakes That Void the Endorsement
Most problems come down to carelessness during setup rather than legal complexity. The form is mechanically simple; small errors create expensive gaps.
- Wrong entity name. The name on the endorsement must match the legal name in the contract. If the contract is with “Smith Holdings, Inc.” and the endorsement names “Smith Holdings,” a carrier looking for a reason to subrogate may argue the waiver doesn’t apply.
- Never requesting it at all. Signing a contract that promises a waiver and then failing to request it is the most common failure. If a loss occurs before the endorsement is issued, your insurer has full subrogation rights and your business partner has a breach-of-contract claim against you.
- Not notifying your carrier before signing. Some policies require the carrier’s consent before you enter into any agreement that limits subrogation rights. Signing without consent can void coverage for that claim.
- Using a scheduled endorsement when blanket was needed. If the contract requires a waiver for all entities involved in the project and you only schedule the general contractor, the other parties remain exposed.
- Letting the endorsement lapse. The waiver applies only during the active policy period. If your policy renews and the endorsement doesn’t carry over, any loss after the renewal date has no waiver protection. Confirm with your agent at each renewal that all active waivers are reattached.
Where the Waiver May Not Apply
Waivers are enforceable in most situations, but two limits are worth checking before you agree to one. Federal appellate courts have held that a waiver of subrogation remains enforceable even when the protected party acted with gross negligence, but intentional misconduct is treated differently, and waivers generally do not shield a party from claims arising from deliberately caused harm.
Approximately 45 states have anti-indemnity statutes that restrict how far construction contracts can go in shifting liability. Most target broad-form indemnity agreements, but a handful extend restrictions to waivers of subrogation and additional insured requirements. Kansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico have statutes that specifically limit or void subrogation waivers in certain construction or oil-and-gas contexts. Before agreeing to a waiver, check whether your state’s anti-indemnity law narrows or eliminates the endorsement’s effect, particularly on public construction projects, where restrictions tend to be stricter.