At first glance, certificate of insurance (COI) tracking may seem like it’s a pretty straightforward process. But if you’ve been doing it for a while, you know that it’s anything but easy. For one, it’s one of those jobs where you need to have 100% accuracy all the time; mistakes like misspellings or overlooked information can have costly consequences for your firm. If you’ve had the good fortune of being tasked with managing your company’s COIs, then part of your job description is to pore through every detail with due diligence.
Proper certificate of insurance tracking is a critical component of your firm’s risk management strategy and it can save you from a lot of grief (and keep a lot of heads from rolling!) when it’s properly executed. For that, there are a couple of ground rules that you need to live by when collecting, evaluating, and monitoring COIs for your company:
1. Always Check for Insured Compliance. Always
It’s a giant game of hot potato, and you don’t want to be the one that ends up with the spicy spud. To avoid that, you have to be diligent in checking the compliance of each Insured. If you see one of them that isn’t, you need to be proactive in informing and reminding them to do so.
2. Don’t Let Work Start until there’s a COI on Your Desk.fa
Certificates of insurance exist for your protection. It won’t do to let contractors work without the paperwork to prove that you won’t be the only one to handle the aftermath should an unfortunate event occur.
3. Good COI Tracking = Validating Everything.
Are the Insured really insured? Validating the veracity of a COI is a crucial part of risk management best practices. Finding “Coverage will not be canceled without a 30-day notice given to you,” and “A detailed list of specific insurance requirements is supplied below” is always a good sign.
4. Keep track of Policy Expiration Dates
COIs have an expiration date, and you would do well to mark them down. It’s always to your advantage to have a replacement COI ready before the other one’s policy period ends.
5. Measure Your Progress Regularly
Have metrics in place to measure your progress on your COI tracking program or subscribe to a service that will do it for you automatically, like COI Tracker.
PRO TIP: Use COI Tracker
Actually, save yourself the trouble. This job requires you to do a lot of paperwork, and a lot of that can be taken off your desk with COI Tracker sweating the small stuff for you. Whether it’s certificate requests, compliance verification, and following up on non-compliant Insured and certificates about to expire, COI Tracker will help you keep track of your COIs with relative ease.
But don’t take our word for it. Sign up here and go to our demo page to try COI Tracker for free, and see if it doesn’t free up your hands for things that truly matter. It’s the smartest, safest way to protect your business.