Tenant certificates of insurance, checked against each tenant's own lease.

A tenant's broker sends a certificate at move-in, at each policy renewal, or after a reminder that the last one lapsed. Someone on your team opens the lease, finds the insurance article and any amendment that changed it, and reads the certificate and its endorsements against it: the coverages, the limits the lease names, the parties who must be additional insureds, the waivers, the dates. Whatever falls short becomes a letter to the tenant, and the file is diaried for the next expiry.

For the test, AI does the reading on copies of certificates your team already reviewed. It builds each lease's requirement list, marks every item met, missing or unclear on the papers the tenant sent, quotes the lease section and the certificate or endorsement page behind each mark, and lists the gaps. We call it the sandbox. Nothing is accepted or rejected, and no tenant hears from it.

Two office leases, two different lists. A San Francisco waterfront office lease on file with the SEC starts the insurance duty the day the tenant first enters the space, and asks for general liability, all-risk property on the tenant's improvements, equipment and signs, business interruption for at least twelve months, host liquor liability if alcohol is available on the premises, workers' comp and auto, from insurers rated A-VIII or better by A.M. Best, with the landlord as loss payee on the property policy. A Dublin, California office lease wants an A-X rating instead, property cover on the causes of loss special form at full replacement cost, sprinkler leakage and earthquake sprinkler leakage included, an agreed amount endorsement, and business income and extra expense cover. Both let a tenant reach its liability limits with an umbrella or excess policy on top of the primary one. The draft builds each tenant's list from its own lease and amendments.

Additional insured status has to reach the right parties, in the right paper. The San Francisco lease names the landlord, its trustees and beneficiaries, its mortgagees, its managing agent and its advisor; the Dublin lease names the landlord, its property manager and any lender the landlord designates. The Dublin lease also wants a blanket endorsement or the endorsements themselves carrying the lease's exact wording, kept separate from the certificate. It refuses that wording typed onto a certificate in place of the endorsements, and turns away rubber-stamped signatures. A lender added at a refinancing, or a new managing agent, becomes a gap on every certificate still showing the old names.

The landlord's endorsement has edges. ISO's managers or lessors of premises endorsement covers liability arising out of the part of the premises leased to the tenant, as its schedule shows it. One carrier's published version excludes any occurrence after the tenant stops being a tenant there, and any structural alteration, new construction or demolition done by or for the landlord. Sonoma County's liability and insurance office, which posts sample endorsements it will accept, takes this one only where the county issued a lease, not a permit or license, and warns that an insurer might deny additional insured status otherwise. It also rejects the form with the premises or the name left blank: each must show the location or the exact name, or read as required by contract. The draft notes the occupancy agreement behind every certificate and marks a blank schedule as a gap.

Waivers and public tenants need their own rows. Both leases have landlord and tenant give up claims against each other for property losses their insurance covers, one for risks under fire and extended coverage insurance, the other for losses insured under special form, theft and similar policies, and both call for each side's property insurers to waive subrogation, one outright and one through commercially reasonable efforts. The San Francisco lease also wants a waiver in the landlord's favor on the tenant's liability insurance. A waiver endorsement reaches only the party it names: Sonoma's sample applies only to the person or organization in its schedule. When that county is itself a tenant, it shows liability coverage with a certificate or a letter of self-insurance, and GSA's own lease template asks the federal government, as tenant, for no insurance at all, mentioning insurance only among the lessor's own costs. The draft marks those leases instead of reporting a false gap.

Dates run past the tenant itself. Both leases want certificates by the day the tenant takes possession or first gets access, then again before each policy expires, at least thirty days ahead in one and within thirty days of expiry in the other. The San Francisco lease also wants certificates from the tenant's own contractors, naming the landlord as additional insured, before their work in the space begins. Your reviewer, usually the property manager or lease administrator who keeps the insurance log, will look hardest at the additional insured names, the waivers and every expiry date.

With your reviewer's yes, certificates arriving for the buildings you pick run through the job for about 30 days, new tenants and renewals alike.

Each gap list waits for your property manager or lease administrator to correct and approve it. Your team decides what is accepted, writes to the tenant or its broker and updates the log. Nothing else starts that month.