How Do You Know If It’s an ISO Policy Form?

March 18, 2024 by

Since its official inception in 1971, Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO) has been the national insurance industry standard setter for policy form language. Many insurers use pure ISO forms, usually along with proprietary endorsements of their own. Even insurers who don’t subscribe to ISO forms often use language very close, even identical, to that in ISO forms.

ISO was formed via the consolidation of dozens of state and regional inspection, rating, and actuarial bureaus into one national advisory organization. There are advantages to some degree of standardization of thousands of insurance policy forms, while still allowing, in most states, for non-ISO endorsements that may broaden or restrict coverage.

Most industry education and reference materials focus on ISO forms and many businesses that establish minimum coverage requirements for their business partners do so by requesting that coverage be provided by specific ISO forms “or their equivalent.” The issue for agents trying to assist their customers in meeting these requirements is, how do you know if a form provided by an insurer is a pure ISO form, a modified version, or a proprietary form?

If it’s a pure ISO form, then you pretty much know what you have or you can find out using annotated form reference materials such as those provided by firms like the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI).

If it’s not ISO, then the agent and insured are often tasked with the responsibility of determining whether the form in question is “equivalent” to the ISO form being requested.

So, how can you tell if a policy form is an ISO standard form? There are at least three tests.

The first test is the format of the policy form number. For their coverage forms, ISO uses a 10-digit numbering system. Take, for example, the CG 00 01 04 13 form.

The first two digits are letters that indicate the line of insurance. In this example, “CG” is the abbreviation for Commercial General Liability. A form beginning with “HO” would be a HomeOwners form, “CA” would be Commercial Auto, and “PP” would be Private Passenger Auto.

The next two digits tell you the broad type of form. For example, “00” indicates a primary coverage form, as opposed to a modifying endorsement. A form that begins with “CG 20” means it’s a CGL form that deals with additional insureds (the “20” series) in some way. A form that starts with “CP 11” is a commercial property builders risk category endorsement.

If, as an agent, you’re reviewing a multi-form CGL policy that an insurer has put together for a customer and you see one or more endorsements whose form numbers begin with “CG 21,” you should pay special attention, since that category is reserved for exclusionary endorsements. On the other hand, form numbers beginning with “CG 24” are usually coverage broadening endorsements.

ISO’s commercial lines manual includes a listing of these categories. So, if you come across a form that begins with “CG 70,” you immediately know it’s not an ISO form because ISO reserves the “70” category for insurer proprietary forms. This lets you know that you probably need to inquire from the carrier as to what this form does and why it’s being used.

The second test involves the final four digits of the coverage form. These digits are the edition date of the form in the format “MM YY.” For example, for ISO’s homeowners program, the countrywide edition dates would be within the years 1984, 1991, 2000, 2011, or 2022. If I got a question from someone about “the 2008” ISO HO 00 03, I’d know it’s not the countrywide edition of that form because ISO had no 2008 countrywide filing for primary coverage forms in that line of insurance.

The third test, and probably most foolproof 99.99% of the time, is the copyright notice at the bottom of the form. Any insurer subscribing for the use of ISO form language must include a copyright notice on the forms they use. This notice usually takes one of two formats:

  • “© Insurance Services Office, Inc. 20__” or “© ISO Properties, Inc., 20__”; or
  • “Includes Copyrighted material of Insurance Services Office, Inc. with its permission.

The first category above should mean that the form is verbatim, an unmodified ISO form. The second category that begins with the word “Includes” means that
the form contains ISO language but also additional wording that can dramatically alter the coverage from what ISO intended. Such forms may be 99% ISO language or 1% ISO language. Caveat emptor.

All of this being said, on a rare occasion, especially in the surplus lines marketplace, you may come across a form with the “right” ISO form number and copyright notice that is not a pure ISO form. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve encountered such forms, but they are out there in the marketplace, so be careful.

Finally, be particularly careful when your customer enters into a contract with insurance requirements that call for a spe- cific ISO form number “or its equivalent.” If you have a carrier with a form that is not that exact form number but you’re assured that it does the same thing, again, caveat emptor.

If the language is not identical, there’s a reasonable chance the form is not equiva- lent to the ISO form.

To summarize, there are three basic tests to determine if a policy form is an ISO form: