Best Certificate of Insurance Tracking Software
Protect Your Business From Costly Claims
Ask your CFO or Risk Manager just how much claims and lawsuits can cost your business. If you are collecting certificates just to confirm they were received, you have no guarantee that your requirements are being met. myCOI Central is built on a foundation of insurance industry logic to ensure you remain protected with the appropriate coverage.
Automate Your COI Tracking
There’s no more need to worry about stacks of certificates cluttering up your office or hours of frustrating phone calls and emails to chase down certificates. myCOI Central provides your company with a solution to automate your insurance certificate requests, collection, and compliance resolution, while also giving your team a single, centralized repository to view compliance.
For Agents & Brokers
Win business and boost retention by providing agency branded, industry leading insurance tracking software to your insureds. Offer software only or add on your own compliance review services.
What Are The Benefits of COI Software?
Subcontractor Certificate Of Insurance Tracking Platform
Certificate of insurance management is never more important in a business than when that business hires lots—dozens, scores, even hundreds—of subcontractors. Each of those subcontractors, if you don’t insist on compliant insurance standards, can open your company to incredible insurance risk.
Insurance is not protection against what will happen; insurance is protection against what can happen, and no one predicts accidents.
Companies like yours often approach subcontractor insurance tracking from a variety of ways. Sometimes, either because of good planning or because of bad past experiences, companies use solutions like myCOI for fully managed certificates of insurance for subcontractors. Sometimes, companies use manual processes like Excel spreadsheets or even paper checklists. No matter what insurance tracking platform they choose, it’s because they know a certificate of insurance tracking platform is critical.
Sometimes, even when they request COIs, they don’t even look at them.
Let’s go through just some of the reasons that last one is a terrible idea.
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? 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.
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.
How To Request A Certificate Of Insurance From A Vendor
If you’re a contractor or business asking “when do you need a certificate of insurance from a vendor?,” the answer is pretty simple: before any vendor that enters your business premises or project site to perform work and takes any actions that may generate any risk at all needs to give you a certificate of insurance.
That sounds pretty vague, we know, but it’s a simple reality. Risk exists all around us, whether we generate it or not, and the last thing you want to do is assume the burden of risk your vendor opened you to because you failed to secure a certificate of insurance.
Now you may ask “what is a certificate of insurance for vendors?” and the answer is, the same thing you provide to other entities that you do work on behalf of. It should show the vendor’s coverage, any limitations or exclusions, and all the usual information. You should request certificates of insurance from vendors every time you hire them.
Knowing how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor likely comes down to how your business works with vendors. In many cases, COIs with the minimum insurance requirements for vendors are required as part of the vendor application process or were specified in the RFP, or in an agreement or contract. If not, it’s often a requirement before the vendor can begin working.
If you deal with a lot of vendors, you can often save a lot of time by having a sample letter requesting certificate of insurance from vendors on hand. Knowing how to request a certificate of insurance from a vendor does little to shield you from the hours of work you have ahead of you verifying all those resultant COIs, though.
What Does A Certificate Of Insurance Look Like
If you’re a contractor, you need to have a certificate of insurance for business for the insurance policies your business has. There are probably lots of insurance policies you carry at your company. These include:
- General liability insurance, which covers the potential liability you take on with each project, such as construction projects
- Commercial auto insurance, which covers your vehicles and drivers during the job
- Commercial property insurance, which protects any real estate you might have or lease for your business
- Workers compensation and Employers Liability
When it comes to certificates of insurance 101, you need to make sure you have accurate certificates to represent all of your policies. Don’t just trust a certificate of insurance PDF. Know what you’re looking for. A few critical elements include:
- The limits of your protection
- The effective and expiration dates, which define when that policy is active
- Your insurers or carriers, which are your insurance companies
You should not be creating your own COIs. Even though you should review your certificates, it is essential to rely on a specialized third party like your insurance agent to produce them. This is one of the services that your policy premiums pay for. That way, you know you have the proper protection for your company the next time you start a project.
And remember that certificate of insurance requirements by state can be very different. Let’s imagine you’re headquartered in Cincinnati, which puts you within working distance of both Indiana and Kentucky. All three of those states could have differing regulatory requirements around insurance and compliance, and it’s your responsibility to be compliant.
Certificates Of Insurance 101
Let’s take a moment and run through certificates of insurance 101. In its most simple form, a certificate of insurance is the evidence from your insurer that you carry the insurance you claim to carry. The normal forms include all the necessary information a requestor would need to verify that you or your business carry the insurance they require of their contracted entities. Just like your driver’s license says your state believes you know how to drive safely, so a certificate of insurance says your agent or broker believes you are covered.
There are nuances, of course. The certificate of insurance for businesses may be different, and will almost certainly carry different information, than the certificate of insurance for contractors, because the work done, the number of employees involved, and therefore the risk involved can be different.
A certificate of insurance also removes the need for unnecessary conversations. If you’re being considered for a job, competing on the bid is enough work. Not having to explain your insurance coverage, because your certificate of insurance explained it for you, can be a real time saver.
Remember too that insurance requirements vary by state, which means that certificate of insurance requirements by state vary also. Knowing when to request a certificate of insurance or, if you’re on the receiving end, how to check certificate of insurance can often be the difference between risk being managed and risk being out of control.
Certificates Of Insurance Issues And Answers
We know this can be a complicated topic because we get asked about certificate of insurance issues and 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.