Subcontractor Certificate Of Insurance Tracking App

Ensuring the insurance liability assumed by your contracting company is held to the absolute necessary minimum is the often thankless, sometimes tedious and frustrating, but absolutely critical work your risk management team does. They wade through the piles of certificates of insurance for subcontractors, verifying that the coverages match your corporate standards, that the coverage hasn’t lapsed, and that your subcontractors are assuming all the risk they should be.

You work in construction. You understand the difference between safety and risk. The next time you see ‘confirm COIs’ on your project plan, and you want to ask “what does a certificate of insurance look like” because you’re not sure? Ask your risk team.

And maybe bring them a coffee, because subcontractor insurance tracking can make caffeine a food group. Trust us. We know. They embrace a certificate of insurance tracking app and can finally relax.

Let’s look at why that is.

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 by 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 spreadsheets are not a bad solution.

Many companies find spreadsheets a good training tool; for a certificate of insurance tracking template Excel has several basic templates that can be customized to what you need, but most companies scale past this very quickly.

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.

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.

Certificate Of Insurance Tracking Software

The competition for the best COI tracking software is fierce, and we’d be being dishonest if we didn’t say you need to choose the right solution for your company. Obviously, at myCOI we believe we are the right solution nine times out of ten, but we don’t fit every company, and that’s okay. Certificate tracking online could be a critical part of your business no matter what solution you use, whether that’s a fully managed partner solution, myCOI competitors, or something else.

You’ll need to define what “best” means for your business when considering certificate management software. Is it the least expensive insurance tracking app? That depends on how you measure cost. In pure dollars, a free COI tracking software may work, but is it reliable? Do its developers offer support? Are there regular product updates coming out? If not, check it carefully to make sure it isn’t out of date. Insurance tracking services are only as good as their updates.

Is “best” the least of your precious person-hours consumed by tracking certificates of insurance? Or is it as simple as you’re tired of turnover and teaching new hires how to check certificate of insurance requirements? Then a managed solution like myCOI offers may be best. Our team of insurance professionals know what they’re looking at, and they’re experts in making sure your certificates are promising what they say they do, that they meet your business requirements for coverage, and our quarterly verification makes sure the coverage stays in effect.

Sample Letter Requesting Certificate Of Insurance From Vendors

There are few tools as useful as sample letters when it comes to trying to process and verify a certificate of insurance. It’s just such a repetitive process that having some useful templates laying around, ready to be customized and sent, just saves you so much time. In our own myCOI Central software platform, for example, we use a lot of templates in our communications with vendors and insurance brokers. They’ve really just become part of certificates of insurance best practices. You know as well as we do you can only answer questions of how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor so many times before you just write it down and hand it over. Knowing how to get a certificate of insurance to compliance is a core skill for risk teams, after all.

A sample letter to insurance company requesting coverage is a good place to start, but also try and think ahead. How many different scenarios can you imagine? Are all of your COI requirements the same, or do you need different templates for different needs. We see a lot of people start with that letter for the insurance company, then realize they need a different way to speak to vendors, so they generate a request certificate of insurance from vendor letter.

And remember, when we say letter, we don’t always mean a paper copy sent in the mail. Sometimes that’s the choice people make, but these days an email is a lot more common, and a lot faster.

How To Organize Certificates Of Insurance

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 a free expiration date tracking software. 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.” That’s just certificate of insurance 101. 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.

Certificates Of Insurance Best Practices

If your business hires a lot of outside help, in the form of subcontractors, vendors, specialists, commercial tenants, really anyone who interacts with your business in a way that generates risk, then certificate of insurance compliance is a key part of your business. 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. Certificate tracking helps mitigate that 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 management best  practice. You’re probably already starting to see that this is more complicated than a software to track expiration dates.

Certificate of insurance management, 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. Knowing how to organize certificates of insurance, and track and verify them, can literally help your company make its quarterly or annual goals.

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

Certificates Of Insurance Issues And Answers

We know this can be a complicated topic because we get asked about certificate of insurance issues and we provide answers all the time. Insurance is a complicated field with nuances around every corner, and almost every situation has some kind of unique aspect. Understanding coverage, understanding what the certificates of insurance actually say—and what they don’t say—can be, and often is, a full-time job, and it often takes more than glancing at a certificate of insurance template.

There are two parties you want to check within almost any instance of questions around certificates of insurance. First, for questions like which vendors need a certificate of insurance, check with your company’s risk management department, or when that doesn’t exist, your company’s general counsel about what your vendor insurance requirements are. In many cases, these departments or people can give you a certificate of insurance review checklist to help you ensure that the COIs you review have all the necessary coverage. They are trained to know how to organize certificates of insurance requirements, and they’re experts at certificate of insurance best practices.

The other party will be the agent or broker who issued the certificate of insurance. When you have questions about the coverage, exclusions, or limitations shown on a certificate of insurance you receive, the only safe source of information is the agent or broker itself. Don’t ask the third party who provided you with the certificate; not only does this give them the opportunity to be dishonest, it also sets you up to be taken advantage of out of ignorance or a mistaken belief about coverage. Go to the source. Ask the agent or broker. Certificate of insurance compliance is complicated enough without adding more chances for mistakes.