COI

What is a COI? The certificate of insurance form (COI) might be one of the most critical items in a company’s risk management portfolio. COI insurance meaning: It’s a simple form, but it carries a lot of weight. If you receive a certificate of insurance for business protection, for example if you hire subcontractors and need those subcontractors to carry the insurance risk they generate through the course of their business, a COI is probably the mechanism by which you confirm that subcontractor is in fact carrying that protection. COI certificate of insurance is an acronym. 

Anyone can find a certificate of insurance online. There are easily available PDFs anyone can fill out, and plenty of examples to show them what should go in each box. This small chance for fraud, limited as it may be, is just one of the reasons that companies like myCOI help companies just like yours track and verify the certificates of insurance that you receive. The standard form is issued by ACORD and may be found by searching for “certificate of insurance ACORD” online.

There are lots of places on the COI form that can provide pitfalls if you don’t know what to look for, but with a little education and a keen eye, you can protect yourself and your business. It can be a practice in “gotcha” style intricacies, but there really are just a few things to make sure of when checking your COIs. For more on that, check out this blog. There, you’ll find a wealth of resources to help you in your compliance efforts in order to ensure you’re doing what you can to protect your business. 

Whether you’re a certificate holder who receives COIs or a named insured who provides them (we’ll explain those terms below!), knowing the ins and outs of a COI form is key. Let’s take a look.

COI Certification

Answering the question of how to get an insurance certificate online, or when do you need a certificate of insurance (COI) from a vendor, depends entirely on who you are and what your role is in this certificate of insurance process, because it affects both sourcing and propriety. We all know that poor tracking on a certificate of insurance costs more than just lost time, but also insurance risk. It’s especially risky when you are needing the proper certificate of insurance for business; one misstep could cost thousands. COI certification is important. 

Let’s first imagine that you’re a contractor, vendor, or other third-party who is being asked to provide a certificate of insurance before you can begin work. In this case, you want to start with your insurance agent or broker’s website. Many providers offer forms that allow you to request the correct certificate without having to make an appointment or make a phone call. Make sure you get a certificate of liability insurance to protect yourself. 

What you should not do, though, is start wondering how to get ACORD insurance certificates online yourself, so you can fill them out without your agent. Don’t do that. Never do that. Let your insurance agent or broker do that. It’s their job, they’re the experts. 

If you’re a certificate holder (the person or entity who receives certificates of insurance) and you need to request updated certificates, you can also start at the insurer’s website, if you know which agent to check out. This can happen in some instances when a certificate holder needs a new or updated certificate because of discrepancies or questions.

Lastly, if you’re an insurer looking for form templates, or even sitting at your computer asking “how do I get a certificate of insurance form template,” check with your senior leadership or check online for resources. ACORD provides helpful instructions for agents and brokers about filling out their forms.

COI Insurance

We’ve mentioned several times about generating prebuilt request COI insurance from vendor letters, for example. Having these kinds of documents handy can really save you time having to write the same letter or email over and over again. But they also have significant usefulness as training aids. Certificate of insurance for business use can be fantastic for ramping new employees up. Conversely, certificate of insurance for contractors is more applicable for the subcontractor. Infamous is the certificate of liability insurance. 

Let’s say you’re on the compliance management team, and you hire a new admin. Having a sample letter on how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor on hand to show them can save you a lot of time explaining the details of what they’ll need to know when they make a request. It sometimes leads to fun questions like “what is a certificate of insurance for vendors?” or “what is a COI in business?” or “what is a certificate of insurance for small business?” and you’ll have to take the time to train on that, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Almost as important as knowing what to put in a letter, though, is knowing how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor. Each business will have its own process: some places make it part of the application process, and some will handle it as a new vendor task after the vendor has been accepted. Your own business will have its own process. Feel free to modify that process to the liking of you and your managers so that you have a custom method for tracking COIs, but if you’re doing it manually, please, for the love, make sure you understand what you’re looking at when you review your certificates. No one wants to open themselves up for liability. 

COI Form

If you’re a contractor or a vendor, a certificate of insurance ACORD COI form is only one of the many types of insurance forms you might be sharing with someone else, though. In general, then, it is helpful to see a COI form PDF. 

At its most basic, this COI form insurance has all the relevant information regarding your insurance policy. There is a lot of information that could be included on this form. For example, this form might have information on when the policy comes into play, its duration, who owns the policy, what the limit on the policy is, if there is a conflict of interest form Texas,  and who you need to contact if you need to file a claim. Sometimes you may need a conflict of interest disclosure example to make sure you’re in line.

If you are looking for a sample certificate of insurance with additional insured, though, then you might be looking for a slightly different document. This certificate includes added endorsements in very specific situations. If you need a certificate of insurance with additional insured, you need to reach out to the insurance agent or broker to make sure you have this type of coverage.

If you’re looking for a certificate holder insurance form, well, stop looking. That’s not a thing. A certificate holder is the entity that receives the certificate of insurance from a contractor, vendor, or other provider. If you receive certificates, that’s you. If you provide them to companies that hire you, that’s the company hiring you.

Remember that even an ACORD certificate of insurance sample is just that: a sample. Not an example, and certainly not proof of coverage.

COI Online

Obtaining a certificate of insurance online can be an easy task if you’re working with contractors who have good relationships with their agents. So don’t wonder how to get a COI! Just ask. Getting a COI online can be as simple as an agent emailing it to you, but if you have a great web-based certificate tracking solution, like my COI online, you’ve got it made in the shade. We make it easy, from how to get an insurance certificate online, to how to get a COI for an event, the answer is simple – myCOI!

COI meaning business is a term that makes no sense, but people have searched for it before. Why? We don’t know. It lacks context. 

COI Insurance Cost

Certificate of liability insurance cost usually comes up with a question like “how much does the COI insurance cost?” or “what does a certificate of insurance for business cost?” or you could even look for “what does a certificate of insurance cost for event management?” The short answer to that is it shouldn’t cost anything: most agents and brokers provide them at no charge and assume the cost out of the premiums you pay. It’s in everyone’s best interest for the insurance coverage you purchase to be clearly understood by all parties: the last thing anyone wants is to be held responsible for a claim because of something simple like the cost of a certificate.

We like to think about certificate cost from another point of view, however. We take the point of view of the certificate holder, the entity that will be receiving the certificate of insurance, and the idea of the cost of not securing and tracking certificates of liability insurance. Not insisting on and then verifying certificates can cost a company quite literally everything.

So you need to know how to get a certificate of liability insurance and want to know the costs for a certificate of liability insurance for a small business; it should be zero. All you should have to do is ask the sub or their agent. 

It costs money to maintain insurance, yes. And it costs money to require certificates of insurance, to insist that every contractor, vendor, or other third-party provide them. It costs money to verify the coverage details, to follow up and ensure the coverage doesn’t lapse, to confirm that when insurance requirements change that the vendors adapt their coverage. It’s often not an insignificant cost, either.

But the cost of failing to do it is potentially so much higher. Can you really afford not to do it?