You’ve Covered Issuance, What About COIs Going In The Other Direction?

For many insurance agents and brokers, dealing with Certificates of Insurance (COIs) is an everyday occurrence. However, the focus is often on COI issuance rather than COI collection and review. Responding to a request for a COI and ensuring the policy includes the required coverage is a critical part of protecting your clients, but managing their inbound COI’s is also incredibly important. As more and more companies work with third-party vendors and subcontractors, the demand for COI collection and review services has grown. Having the knowledge and solutions necessary to securely manage this process and protect this data can help grow your business in the long-term.

What you need to know about COI management

Great commercial agents and brokers already have the knowledge necessary to offer certificate tracking and management services, but the component they are missing is a  COI tracking software platform. While your agency management system offers some great resources for servicing your insureds’ policies, these systems are not specifically designed to address the many unique nuances of managing third party certificates.

When it comes to collecting, reviewing, and storing COI’s and supporting documents, such as endorsements, in a secure software platform, all parties should have access to:

• An intuitive communication tool that allows you, your insureds, their third-party vendors, and the vendors’ agents to communicate, ask questions and provide documentation for review and approval. In addition to streamlining the process and making it easier for you to offer COI management services, such tools also allow you to keep clients in the loop on potential risk exposures created by gaps in their vendors’ coverage.
• An automated review solution that automatically recognizes gaps in coverage, eliminates human error, and enhances risk insight. As policy endorsements and exclusions become more sophisticated, the potential for compliance issues and exposure to uninsured claims grows for your clients. Selecting a solution that can answer to those increasingly sophisticated requirements protects your insureds and creates massive efficiencies in the review process.
• An easy way to request and receive COIs and supporting documents. The manual back-and-forth process of collecting COIs, following up on non-compliant items, and requesting updated documents at renewal time is an extremely time-consuming process. With a secure way to send COI documentation between parties, this once-manual task can now be fully automated and more effective and efficient than ever.
• A central repository of documentation that houses all insurance certificates, endorsements, policies, requirements, vendor guidelines, and other content in an easily searchable, accessible place. In the case of questions, audits, or a claim, insurance documentation can be easily and quickly accessed for review or download.

Together, these features create a comprehensive COI tracking solution that makes collecting, reviewing, and verifying third-party insurance coverage easier and faster than ever. You can learn more about the success of our many agency partners and co-branded certificate management solutions here.