Insurance Compliance App

An insurance compliance app or other smart compliance management system is often one of those things risk teams don’t get around to purchasing until the day after it’s too late to help. Here at myCOI we talk to so many companies just after they’ve survived a damaging claim that should have been avoided. There’s nothing we can do about that claim, but we can help you avoid the next one.

Insurance certificate management is a critical action for any risk team, and one that every team deals with in their own way. Most teams that deal with a small number of certificates of insurance just do it manually: they use spreadsheets and the telephone, and set calendar reminders to check on things like coverage expiration. They generally trust their certificate providers to be carrying the coverage they claim—they don’t validate coverage with the broker. And for a short while, this works.

Manual processes break down, though, when companies scale. When the number of certificates rises above the threshold of easily-managed-by-hand, or the insurance complexity required on each certificate becomes a huge morass of variables based on each specific job… well, that’s when you want a tool on your side.

A insurance compliance app like myCOI. 

Insurance Compliance Software

If your business hires a lot of outside help, in the form of contractors, vendors, and consultants, or lease space to commercial tenants, really anyone who interacts with your business in a way that generates risk, then you want the best certificate of insurance tracking software your business can get. Certificates of insurance, or COIs, are the promise your vendors are making to you that they carry the insurance coverage you require for employment. If you’re not getting them, or worse not tracking them, you could be opening your business to incredible insurance risk.

Certificates of insurance best practices require you to do more than receive a COI. You must verify the coverage. You must verify the details. You must ask for clarification on places where it’s unclear, and you must ensure your business is protected. That’s just certificate of insurance 101. You’re probably already starting to see that this is more complicated than an expiration date tracker.

Certificate of insurance compliance software, like the expert tools and service that myCOI provides, can save your compliance team literally hours of work every day. It can save you from delayed job starts. It can keep your other employees from standing around, waiting for that critical vendor, while you’re confirming their insurance compliance.

And it can save you from having to pay costly insurance claims when, inevitably, there are accidents.

If you research certificate of insurance online solutions, don’t get distracted by insurance certificate issuance software solutions. Those are the tools insurance brokers and agents use to issue certificates. That’s not what you need.  

Certificate Of Insurance Compliance

Knowing how to organize certificates of insurance for tracking is a necessity for any company that hires third parties such as contractors or vendors. A certificate of insurance tracking solution allows businesses to track certificate of insurance compliance. It’s more than an expiration date tracker. And it’s a complicated practice that requires more nuance than “I have a stack of certificates now what?”

One of the most common mistakes that businesses make is not keeping accurate records of certificates of insurance. This puts them at risk for fines and penalties if they do not have up-to-date documentation on hand when requested by a third party, such as an attorney, sometimes even when they think they’re in compliance because they don’t check certificate of insurance requirements by state, which vary. In addition to having legal consequences, failing to keep track of your company’s certificates could lead to financial losses. It also increases the likelihood of liability lawsuits filed against your business. Knowing who needs to provide a certificate of insurance is one of the core components of risk management.

It’s not just those who hire contractors and vendors that need to track certificates of insurance. Property managers who host commercial tenants also need to ensure those tenants are carrying the proper insurance. We often see the duty of securing and verifying these COIs fall on property managers, instead of dedicated risk teams, so we strongly suggest having on hand a sample letter requesting certificate of insurance from commercial tenants, so you can quickly request the COIs you need to manage your property’s risk.

Remember. If you find yourself asking which vendors need a certificate of insurance, the answer is usually “all of them.” The next step, knowing how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor, is something your risk management team probably already has a process for.

Insurance Tracking

Knowing how to track certificates of insurance compliance is the work a risk manager or compliance admin does to collect, verify and maintain the certificates of insurance provided to that company by its third parties. Almost anyone a business hires to do work on its behalf can be asked to provide some form of proof of insurance. And on the face of it, that sounds like a pretty easy ask. But insurance tracking isn’t always that easy.

Collect a piece of paper? A standardized form? And store it? Simple. 

Except each certificate of insurance has to be checked, first and foremost to ensure that it claims all the necessary coverages, amounts, limits, and exclusions that your company requires of its contractors. Sure, there is general liability insurance mentioned, but does it protect to the same amount that you require?

Also, what assurances do you have that the contractor didn’t let the policy lapse the day after they handed you the COI? Are you verifying with insurance agents that these contractors still hold the policies and protections that their COI claims? Are there exclusions to the contractor’s protection that will mean you’re held responsible for risk that should properly rest with the contractor?

If you have any questions as you’re reviewing, contact the vendor or their insurance broker and have the certificate of insurance explained to you. Certificates of insurance issues and answers can be complicated because insurance is complicated, but being able to ensure compliance with your vendors is well worth the effort.

Free COI Tracking Software

Running a business is expensive, and sometimes the last thing you want to add is another expense, even when you have a need. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard companies tell us that they were doing their best: they knew about COI tracking software, but the budget was just too tight, so they did it with Excel or a free COI tracking software. They know how to organize certificates of insurance manually. For a while, they did okay. Sometimes they tried to make do with software to track expiration dates, or they found an insurance policy management software free download and tried to make do.

But their compliance percentage slipped down a little every month, as their business grew and more and more certificates were received. Each of those certificates had to be tracked and verified. Each month, more certificates than the last.

At a certain point, the amount of unnecessary risk they were assuming got to be too much, and they had to look for a more professional solution. Sometimes it’s because their risk management team or general counsel audits and realizes the exposure. Sometimes a new hire discovers a distressing reality that had gone unnoticed.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s because the company just had to pay a damaging claim that they should have been covered for.

Free COI tracking software is not inherently bad, and almost no one sets out to make bad software. But it takes a dedication to customer service, a mission to erase worry, and a team of insurance professionals like the one we’ve assembled at myCOI to make sure your company is doing all it needs to with its certificates of insurance. At myCOI integrations we’ve built with other software make us a powerful option, and a key component people ask about in myCOI demos.

Certificate Of Insurance Tracking Template Excel

If you’re looking for a simple and manual way to track the certificates of insurance in your business, then using a COI tracking spreadsheet is an option worth considering. Many companies begin with solutions like having their staff track insurance policies on Excel spreadsheets or other free COI tracking software. And for smaller companies just starting out, that system works. Whipping up a certificate of insurance template to track your verification is pretty easy.

The drawbacks of using an Excel insurance tracker are that they can be time-consuming to maintain and often require constant updating. What began as a simple project one person could track and easily snowball into a time-intensive process that’s impossible to scale as a company grows. Instead, companies might add more people and more spreadsheets, which leads to  paperwork being lost or misplaced, which leads to increased chances for errors in the data.

We’ve even seen a few examples of team turnover affecting this. When people first set up COI tracking for their business, looking for a certificate of insurance tracking template Excel is the first place they look. But if someone new comes in, and has a different way of doing it, the spreadsheet may be set up all wrong.

It’s not that as an insurance tracker Excel is a bad choice: it’s just that it doesn’t scale. As the number of COIs your business has to deal with grows, so does the need for a more robust, usually automated solution.