When you think about your certificate of insurance compliance review process, you probably think of the costs associated with the staff member who verifies each certificate and ensures each vendor or contractor is compliant. If they spend 15 minutes per 3rd party vendor or contractor, that’s more than ample time to properly verify each certificate and ensure compliance, right?

Wrong. Most executives believe that compliance staff members can do their job, and do it well, in just 15 minutes per certificate. However, most executives simply aren’t aware that to be able to reach 90% compliance, an average of 38 minutes for each certificate is needed. We see that in reality, administrators often only have 15 minutes per COI—and that only equates to 50% to 60% compliance when all is said and done.

Effectively Reviewing Certificates Takes Time

Everyone wishes there were more hours in the day—and we all want to spot and eliminate unnecessary steps—but it’s not always clear which certificate of insurance tasks are sucking your team dry, is it?

When you look at certificate of insurance tracking, there are many critical steps to ensure your organization is compliant, and none of those can be glossed over in favor of saving time or reducing steps in the process. If you’re not directly involved in certificate tracking duties, it can be a challenge to spot inefficiencies while ensuring all bases are covered to make sure your organization avoids a major liability or financial loss. Let’s take a look at some of the tasks involved in manual certificate of insurance tracking:

Multiple calls to collect the certificate of insurance
Review the certificate and associated documentation to ensure it has adequate language in place with NO errors
Internal communication to keep everyone on the same page, or halt a job if needed
Spot checking high-risk vendors for inconsistencies
Manually updating with accounting software
Communicating with all of the contractors, vendors, and other project team players
Collecting and reviewing (and understanding) endorsements
Keeping up with changes in the industry to ensure you are not at risk

Were you aware of the importance of all of these steps in the compliance process? If just one of these is missed or skipped, or completed only partially, it can mean major consequences to your organization.

You Could Be Spending Unnecessary Money on Certificate of Insurance Tracking

Even though we outlined all of the necessary steps for ensuring compliance above, your organization could be saving a significant amount of time and boosting your compliance at the same time—and all with software that integrates seamlessly with your current process. How is that possible?

If your team is relying on accounting software and manually trying to keep up with all of the critical certificate of insurance duties themselves, you’re doing it the hard way. The “hard” way could also leave gaps in your process that you and your compliance staff may not even be aware of.

With automated certificate of insurance tracking tools, your compliance team can seamlessly connect everyone from your staff to vendors and contractors to agents, saving your team significant amounts of time. In addition, insurance certificate tracking software, like myCOI, provides guidance from insurance experts to make sure your company is protected from unnecessary risk from start to finish, and even through the compliance renewal process.

A Better Solution For Managing Compliance

It can be a lot of pressure for the person in charge of certificates of insurance. Shouldn’t you, as an executive, provide them with support they need to make sure the job gets done right? With the right software, you can not only make sure every certificate gets the attention it needs, you can save your team hours of work while significantly reducing risk to your company in the process.

myCOI is a cloud-based software solution and exists for one reason: to help your compliance team handle the task of certificate of insurance management and to protect your company against underinsured claims, costly litigation and failed audits. The software and insurance tracking services are combined into an easy-to-use solution developed and supported by a team of insurance professionals and is built on a foundation of insurance industry logic to automate the certificates of insurance communication process and ensure you remain protected.