A Bad COI Communication System Can Cost You More Than You Think

When it comes to certificate of insurance (COI) tracking and all of the processes that go along with ensuring compliance for subcontractors or 3rd party vendors, missing an important element can be detrimental to your company’s financial health and future. In addition, your compliance staff may be unintentionally wasting time by using various manual systems, even with the most streamlined procedures in place. The common denominator? An inefficient process for tracking certificates of insurance. Without even knowing, many companies waste a significant amount of time in an inefficient internal communication process that simply doesn’t work.

Important Insurance Certificate Items Can Go Under the Radar

For your compliance staff, keeping insurance documents organized often means updating excel sheets, manually typing information into accounting systems, and using a complicated system of post-it notes that can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Manual processes can also lead to errors or omissions either because of the manual processes your staff have to work through, or because the vendor’s insurance agency has left something critical off of the certificate or endorsements. Not only do those manual tasks add mounting pressure to your compliance staff, but it also adds significant risk to the organization.

Not to mention, life happens: team members go on vacation, take sick days, or give their two weeks’ notice, leaving your organization stranded if you are relying on a manual process, or worse, on a single individual’s memory. All of these variables add up to additional risks and inconsistencies with insurance certificate tracking and internal communication.

So what exactly can happen when a detail regarding certificate of insurance compliance falls through the cracks? As we illustrated in a previous post, a detail left out or overlooked can cost millions, not to mention a company’s reputation.

Most Executives Underestimate Insurance Certificate Tracking Costs

Though many executives may not be aware of how severe the financial consequences can be, most are aware of the potential risks if an important detail is missed or is filled out incorrectly on the endorsements or policies. However, there is more to calculating the cost of a bad Certificate of Insurance communication system than a certificate falling through the cracks. Without fail, executives underestimate how much time it takes to actually review each COI and ensure compliance for every single subcontractor and 3rd party vendor.

Conducting manual in-house insurance certificate tracking is very expensive when you calculate the cost of the team members’ salaries and associated benefits, taxes, and etc. Consider that for every 100 certificates of insurance that need to be tracked in your system, you could be saving 40 hours each year. To put it another way, if your company needs to track 1,000 certificates every year for your 3rd party vendors or contractors, you could be giving your team a whopping ten extra weeks of time to devote to other priorities during the year, just by switching to a more efficient certificate tracking program. Your team likely has many other responsibilities, so the amount of time they are spending on certificate tracking could be reduced so they can focus on quality of tracking in addition to other priorities.

How is this possible?

Improve The Communication Process With Insurance Tracking

A Certificate of Insurance tracking software can help your team do their jobs more accurately and with better precision while dramatically reducing time that would have been spent working to ensure compliance on each certificate of insurance, one by one. Utilizing software that simplifies the process with automation boosts efficiency of the communication across teams, and allows you to quickly determine if you’re actually compliant. Your team will not only save hours of time, but will also save your company from unnecessary financial risk.

By utilizing smarter tools, you could be saving a significant amount of the time your team spends on inefficient processes and reduce your risk with a better process. Are you ready to start taking advantage of insurance certificate tracking software that was built by experienced insurance professionals and will deliver a huge ROI?

Let Lumie handle the paperwork

Keeping every certificate current is a lot to ask of any team. illumend, from myCOI, reads each certificate and endorsement against your requirements, flags what’s missing, and follows up with your third-party partners for you. You’ll see who’s covered, and who isn’t, without chasing a single email.

Want to see it in your workflow? Schedule a demo and we’ll show you how illumend fits.