Insurance Compliance

Insurance compliance is a phrase that can mean a lot of things to different people. Here at myCOI we think of tracking the compliance of third-party insurance on certificates of insurance (COI), because that’s our business: we erase the worry of certificate tracking for companies that use our software or hire our team of insurance professionals.

Other teams may take insurance compliance to mean insurance regulatory compliance, which is the business function that ensures a business is aligned with any and all federal, state, or local regulatory insurance requirements. In the United States, there are many varied requirements around business insurance regulations, for example. 

These meanings generally apply to larger businesses that hire other businesses, but insurance compliance is a necessity for companies that get hired, as well. Subcontractors, specialists, independent vendors: all of these kinds of companies regularly have to check to see if they’re compliant with the standards the hiring company insists on as a condition of employment.

Regardless of which specific track of insurance compliance you’re currently pursuing, know that it is important, even critical work for your company. There are few more unanticipated and sometimes destructive unexpected expenses than insurance claims your company should never have been liable for. We’ve seen such claims put companies behind by years or more, or even shove them out of business altogether.

No one wants that to be their company. That’s just one of the reasons so many companies trust myCOI to help them avoid that risk. We can help you, too.

Certificate Of Insurance Compliance

Certificate 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.

Collect a piece of paper? A standardized form? And store it? Easy-peasy. 

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?

This kind of complexity is why some people cringe when they hear “insurance” compliance frameworks can be such a boon. The role of a compliance officer in insurance company operations is to manage risk. That’s not an easy job, but it is a critical one.

Remember that there are varied certificate of insurance requirements by state, and you need to be aware of them. Certificate of insurance best practices in every case remind you to check your state requirements, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t do the same.

What Is Compliance

Don’t be concerned if you’re asking “what is compliance?” It’s a question we get all the time. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines compliance as “the act or process of complying to a desire, demand, proposal, or regimen or to coercion.” That’s a definition with a surprising number of negative-connotation words but trust us: if your job is to be a compliance specialist, it’s not that scary.

It is and probably always will be complicated, though, because insurance is complicated. If we talk just for a minute about insurance compliance meaning we only care about whether or not your company is compliant with insurance regulations, you can probably relax. Unless your company is brand new, regulatory compliance has almost certainly been ensured before you started your role. You will of course want to monitor regulatory bodies for updates to those codes: laws and rules sometimes change, and your compliance will need to be updated.

At myCOI we specialize in certification of insurance compliance between you and your third parties: the subcontractors, vendors, and other specialist companies who come to work for you on your job sites or in your buildings. Making sure that those third parties are compliant not only with regulatory requirements but also with your own internal standards is a key component of risk management.

Let’s pretend you’re a construction company that hires subcontractors and make a very generalized example. Let’s say you require them to have at least one million dollars coverage in general liability insurance. You may be requesting COIs, sure, but if you’re not checking them, confirming that coverage is in place, you may have subcontractors on site with only a quarter of the required coverage. If there’s a claim, you could be in real danger of liability.

COI Tracking Spreadsheet

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. And for smaller companies just starting out, that system works. For basic certificate of insurance tracking Excel is not a bad solution.

The drawbacks of using an Excel insurance tracker are that it 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.  being lost or misplaced, which leads to increased chances for errors in the data.

That is exactly the worry that myCOI erases. Our systems are industry-leading. Our insurance professionals are top-notch. If you’re tracking hundreds of certificates of insurance, we’d love the chance to show you just how much time and effort we can save you.

Insurance Compliance News

You’re probably, by now, starting to see that while insurance compliance is rigorous and complicated, certain aspects of it like oversight are relatively stable. Stable, however, doesn’t mean static. You need to pay attention to what’s going on around you and your industry. Finding some way to keep up with insurance compliance news is just a smart idea.

You can find general risk and compliance news pretty easily online. For example, the Wall Street Journal maintains a site on Risk Management and Regulation Compliance News that catches a lot of the national-level updates. For more local news, check your state and municipal websites; many of those have update subscription buttons or even full-fledged newsletters you can sign up for. 

Many verticals have unique regulatory nuances, so make sure you check your specific area of business. If you work in health care, searching for “healthcare compliance news” will get you started. But don’t neglect general searches. There are those rare updates that cross verticals.

Insurance Compliance Software

Insurance compliance software is one of the most important purchases your risk management team can make, and that importance only scales up as the number of COIs you need to track increases. At myCOI, we’re devoted to erasing the worry of certificate of insurance tracking, by using our industry-leading software and services to make sure your COIs are compliant when you accept them and across the lifetime of your contract with your third-party.

There are other solutions, of course, including free COI tracking softwares. And many of them may be the right choice for your business, but myCOI has spent more than a decade ensuring that we’re the right choice for almost any company. We offer the best technology backed up by the very best team of insurance professionals. We work hard, every day, to make sure ours is the best certificate of insurance tracking software.

And no one—no one—cares more than we do.

If you’re comparing a couple of COI management systems against each other, pay attention to things like this:

• Can the solution verify compliance against certificate of insurance requirements by state?
• Can it read both typed and handwritten COIs?
• Is it backed by a team of insurance professionals, or are you putting all of your faith (and your risk) in a machine?
• Does it meet all the individual needs you have for your business and your compliance team?
• Is it insurance software, or insurance tracking software? Sometimes the difference is very important.

Take demos from all of them. Go in with a list of questions. And don’t leave that demo until you have your questions answered.

Insurance Compliance Jobs

Did you get through all that without deciding “nope, something else, that all sounds terrible?” Fantastic! Insurance compliance is a great place to build a career, because the demand is only going up. Insurance compliance jobs get added all the time as a company scales. More and more third parties need more and more compliance managers to keep track of them.

And if you want to progress? What if you want to go from compliance manager to insurance compliance officer? Compliance jobs are often done under different titles at different companies, but your leadership should be able to articulate some kind of career growth plan for you.

And if you don’t know what that is? Just search “what is a compliance officer?” and start reading.

We cannot stress enough how critical the work that these roles—that you—do every day really is to your business. Our founders here at myCOI have sat at your desks and felt your pains. That’s where we came from, and our mission has always remained the same: help you erase the worry you feel about insurance compliance.