Regardless of the nature of your business, Certificate of Insurance (COI) tracking should be an essential tool in your risk management arsenal. In the construction industry, the risks are just far too higher.
Manual insurance tracking is not as effective due to the high volume of workers, injury rates, and missed deadlines. It is physically impossible and inaccurate to check the policies and coverages for all your workers.
Insurances have different dates of expiry, which makes it even more difficult to keep track of them. However, an automated insurance tracking system could take this entire burden off your shoulder. Here are four reasons why tracking your insurance is more important than you think.
- The construction industry is highly risky
Based on a study conducted by KPMG, more than 78% of companies believe that the risks involved in construction do not seem to be decreasing. Tracking COIs will not explicitly protect you and your business. Nevertheless, it may pinpoint who is liable for what without having to involve expensive compliance experts.
It makes it easy for your legal counsel to complete the process of claiming. This would fasten the insurance payouts with fewer billed hours to your legal counsel.
In case of a fire, or anything similar, you do not have to worry about losing your documents if you are tracking them with software. Instead of having to dig through a pile of paperwork, you can easily determine the insurance coverage for all your contractors.
- You cannot depend on your contractors & subcontractors
You would often have to work with several sub-contractors since you will need people with multiple skill sets. It is always good to make them submit an up-to-date COI with clearly described liability coverages.
This way, you will always know how to react if they fail to meet project goals or get involved in an accident. However, the problem is, just because they have one, does not mean that they have read it. They acquire the document just for the sake of it. Most contractors choose to buy cheap and substandard insurances. They do this to save money without realizing the underlying risk.
Depending on what insurance each of these contractors has, their deliverables and levels of coverage would vary. Automated tracking software is your only option to keep yourself out of confusion. You also do not have to delay responding to legal claims.
- Construction sites are financially precarious
Not all construction companies are financially stable to sail through the difficulties. Cash flow is still a major problem in the industry. One lost bid could mean the difference between operating one day and shutting down the next.
If this happens, the contractor could shut down his operations mid-way. The incomplete work that they leave you with could destroy your entire operations.
A COI tracker can instantly tell you what financial compensation you can request. It will keep your project alive and would never let their financial problems affect you.
- Tracking every individual insurance separately is painstaking
Most construction companies still rely on spreadsheets to track their COIs. They believe that tracking insurances are as easy as managing their project timelines.
Excel sheets might help you track expiry dates but you might lose track of many other important parameters. Tracking software will help you maintain risk profiles on all your business partners and contractors.
Apart from making sure that your coverage is up-to-date, it also checks for compliance. In case of an accident, you would know precisely what coverage you have when you employ COI tracking software.
Conclusion
A Certificate of Insurance tracking is not an expense but an investment. The price you pay for it is minuscule when compared to the risks and financial losses that it can save you.
Once you have your COI tracking software in place, read this article: Increasing Your COI Tracking Efficiency: Here Are 6 Things You Can Do to increase tracking efficiency.
Every day your waste is bringing you one-step closer to an unsupervised insurance expiry. If you wish to try it, all you have to do is to Schedule a free demonstration and let our experts help you.