ACORD form reference: what each form is, and what comes off it
The ACORD forms that move through a commercial insurance operation every day — what each one is for, where it sits in the workflow, and the fields teams actually extract from it. Written for brokers, MGAs, underwriters and operations teams who handle these forms rather than for people learning what ACORD is.
A practical reference, not official ACORD documentation
ACORD maintains hundreds of forms and owns the forms themselves. This page reproduces none of them. What it gives you is the working knowledge that usually lives in individual heads: which number is which, where each form shows up, and what an operations team pulls off it.
Not affiliated with ACORD
Regure is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by ACORD. Form numbers, titles and structures change; for the authoritative and current version of any form, go to ACORD directly. Treat this as a field guide, not a specification.
Editions vary
Most of these forms have been revised repeatedly, and carriers accept different editions. Field positions move between editions even when the data does not, which is exactly why filename-and-position matching breaks and structural recognition does not.
Where the numbers came from
Form numbers and purposes here are checked against the ACORD forms index. The “commonly extracted” fields are what we see teams actually pull in practice, which is a smaller set than each form contains.
Thirteen forms that carry most of the daily traffic
Grouped by where they appear: the submission pack, evidence of cover, claims first notice, and policy servicing.
| Form | Purpose | Appears when | Commonly extracted |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACORD 125 Commercial Insurance Application | The applicant-information section of a commercial submission. Carries the business itself rather than any one line of cover, and every section form sits beneath it. | Submission, first document in the pack | Named insured, mailing and location addresses, FEIN, SIC/NAICS, entity type, years in business, contact, prior carrier, loss history summary, lines requested |
| ACORD 126 Commercial General Liability Section | The general liability section of the submission, filed alongside the 125. Where the liability exposure and the rating basis are described. | Submission, per line quoted | Class codes and descriptions, exposure basis and amount, limits (occurrence and aggregate), deductible, coverage extensions, claims-made or occurrence |
| ACORD 140 Commercial Property Section | The property section of the submission. On a multi-location risk this is usually the longest part of the pack and the one most often supplied as a spreadsheet instead. | Submission, per line quoted | Location and building numbers, construction type, year built, occupancy, protection class, sprinklers and alarms, building and contents values, business income, valuation basis, causes of loss |
| ACORD 127 Business Auto Section | The commercial auto section, covering the vehicles, the drivers and the cover requested. | Submission, per line quoted | Vehicle year, make, model and VIN, garaging location, radius of operation, cost new, liability and physical damage limits, driver schedule |
| ACORD 130 Workers Compensation Application | The workers compensation submission. The most rating-sensitive of the common commercial forms, because payroll by class code drives the price directly. | Submission, per line quoted | Payroll by class code, employee counts, states of operation, experience modification, prior carrier and loss history, officers included or excluded, governing class |
| ACORD 131 Umbrella / Excess Section | The umbrella or excess layer, describing what it sits above and how far it reaches. | Submission, per line quoted | Limits requested, self-insured retention, schedule of underlying policies and their limits, exclusions |
| ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule | The overflow sheet, attached wherever a standard form ran out of room. Free text by design — and on a complex risk it often carries the detail the underwriter most needs. | Attached to anything | Free text, referencing the form and section it continues |
| ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance | The most widely handled ACORD form. Evidences liability cover to a certificate holder, usually because a contract requires it. | Post-bind, on request and at renewal | Producer, insured, insurers and NAIC codes, policy numbers, effective and expiry dates, coverage types and limits, certificate holder, additional insured and waiver indicators |
| ACORD 28 Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance | Evidences property cover, most often to a lender or mortgagee rather than a general certificate holder. Routinely confused with the ACORD 25, which evidences liability. | Post-bind, usually lender-driven | Named insured, property location, policy number and term, coverage and amount, deductible, mortgagee or loss payee and their clause, additional interest |
| ACORD 1 Property Loss Notice | First notice of a property claim, usually submitted by the agent or broker for the policyholder. | Claims, first notice | Policy number and term, date and time of loss, loss location, cause and description, estimated amount, contact, police or fire report reference |
| ACORD 2 Automobile Loss Notice | First notice of an auto claim, for both personal and commercial auto. | Claims, first notice | Policy number, date and location of accident, vehicles and drivers, injuries, third parties and their carriers, description of circumstances, police report reference |
| ACORD 35 Cancellation Request / Policy Release | Requests cancellation of a policy and records the basis and effective date. | Policy servicing | Policy number, cancellation effective date, reason, pro-rata or short-rate basis, signature and date |
| ACORD 36 Agent / Broker of Record Change | Records the policyholder moving the account to a different agent or broker. Small, high-consequence, and time-sensitive to process. | Policy servicing, account movement | Named insured, policy numbers affected, incoming and outgoing producer, effective date, signature and date |
The field groups that repeat across the submission pack
A commercial submission is not thirteen unrelated documents. The same handful of field groups repeats across the pack, which is why extracting one form well is a different problem from extracting a pack consistently — the named insured on the ACORD 125 has to be the same named insured on the 140, or the submission does not reconcile.
Identity of the insured
Repeats on every form in the pack and has to agree across all of them. Mismatches here are the most common reason a submission fails validation, and they are usually a trading name on one form and the legal entity on another rather than a genuine error.
Classification and exposure
The rating basis. On the 126 it is class codes and exposure; on the 130 it is payroll by class code; on the 140 it is values by location. This is the group where an extraction error costs money rather than time.
Policy period and limits
Effective and expiry dates, limits by coverage, deductibles and retentions. Straightforward to read on a clean form and routinely ambiguous on a scan where the year is handwritten.
Locations and schedules
Location and building numbering ties the property section together. Where a risk has more than a handful of locations, this usually arrives as a spreadsheet alongside the ACORD 140 rather than on it — which means the pack has two formats to reconcile.
Loss history
Summarised on the 125 and detailed in loss runs from prior carriers, each in its own format. Normalising several carriers onto one basis is a separate job from reading the form.
Interested parties
Certificate holders, additional insureds, mortgagees, loss payees and waivers of subrogation. Small fields with outsized consequences — a wrong mortgagee clause on an ACORD 28 stops a property completion.
The form is standard. What arrives is not.
Editions move the fields
A form revised four times has four layouts carrying the same data. Anything matching on coordinates breaks on the next edition; anything matching on structure does not. This is the single most common reason a template-based extraction project stalls in month three.
The ACORD 101 carries the important part
The Additional Remarks Schedule is where anything that did not fit ends up — and on a complex risk that often includes the detail an underwriter most needs. It is free text by design, so it is the part a fields-only extraction misses entirely.
Packs arrive incomplete and out of order
A submission turns up as one email with the 125 and the 140 but no 126, then the 126 arrives three days later from a different sender with no reference. Matching the second delivery to the first submission is the actual work.
Scans, photos and re-scans
A meaningful share of ACORD traffic is a photograph of a printout of a PDF, or a fax re-scanned twice. The data is all there; it is simply not machine-readable in the way a clean sample suggests.
Regure classifies these forms on their structure rather than their filename or layout position, and returns every field with a confidence score, so high-confidence fields flow through and anything uncertain is queued for review with the original document beside the extracted value. See document processing for how that works, or ACORD automation for MGAs for the submission-pack workflow.
What people ask about ACORD forms
What is the difference between ACORD 25 and ACORD 28?
The ACORD 25 is a Certificate of Liability Insurance and evidences liability cover to a certificate holder, usually under a contract requirement. The ACORD 28 is Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance and evidences property cover, most often for a lender or mortgagee. They are different documents for different audiences, and are frequently confused because both are “proof of insurance”.
Which ACORD forms make up a commercial submission?
Typically the ACORD 125 for applicant information, then a section form per line being quoted: 126 for general liability, 140 for property, 127 for business auto, 130 for workers compensation, 131 for umbrella or excess. The ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule is attached wherever the standard fields ran out.
Is ACORD 130 a claims form?
No. ACORD 130 is the Workers Compensation Application, a submission document. First notice of loss forms are the ACORD 1 for property and the ACORD 2 for automobile. The confusion is common because the numbers sit near other claims-side forms.
Are ACORD forms free to use?
ACORD owns the forms and licenses their use. This reference describes what the forms are for and what data teams extract from them; it does not reproduce the forms. For the authoritative current edition of any form, go to ACORD directly.
Why does ACORD form extraction accuracy vary so much between vendors?
Because most of the difficulty is not in reading a clean form. It is in handling multiple editions of the same form, free-text remarks schedules, incomplete packs that arrive across several days from different senders, and documents that have been printed, scanned and photographed. Accuracy on a clean sample tells you very little about accuracy on real intake.
Is this reference affiliated with ACORD?
No. Regure is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by ACORD. This is a practical reference maintained by Regure for insurance operations teams, and the forms themselves remain ACORD property. See what ACORD forms are for the background.
Send us an ACORD form and watch it come back as data
Any form on this page, in whatever condition it actually arrives — scanned, photographed, or a fax of a printout. Every field comes back with a confidence score, so you can see what would flow straight through and what your team would still check.