ACORD is a global non-profit known for its standardized certificate of insurance (COI) forms. These streamlined documents contain pertinent information regarding an insured’s insurance policy and are essential in compliance and business dealings.
Self-insurance involves setting money aside for a potential loss instead of purchasing a third-party insurance policy. Depending on the losses your business faces, this could either save or cost more money than traditional insurance coverage.
A waiver of subrogation is a contractual provision that indemnifies third-party subcontractors from liability—revoking an insurer's right to recoup losses from a claim concerning third-party fault for incurred damages.
A certificate of liability insurance provides proof businesses are covered by an active, commercial general liability insurance policy. This convenient, accessible document is important to prove insurance status, mitigate liability, and protect businesses in third-party contracts.
AM Best credit rating agency scores insurers’ creditworthiness on a scale of A+ to D to measure insurance-related risks and help consumers make informed decisions.
Third-party risk assessments evaluate factors such as vendor reputation, data security, financial standing, mission, and more to mitigate liabilities, streamline project workflow, and ultimately, influence hiring.
Certificate holders possess proof of insurance on commercial general liability policies, while additional insureds are other parties coverage has been extended to, beyond the initial policyholders.
Best practices for third-party risk management include investing in a cloud-based vendor management software, hiring the right vendors and maintaining a vendor list, streamlining document tracking, and keeping open lines of communication.
Primary and non-contributory endorsements are common insurance addendums that protect additional insureds from costly third-party liabilities and potentially, having to make contributions during claims.
COI tracking ensures vendors are insured, sets professional expectations, enables instant compliance correction, and helps businesses stay organized—all of which tremendously aid in effective third-party risk management.
Excess liability insurance provides additional limits to an underlying policy, while umbrella liability insurance expands coverage to include claims and losses outside its initial scope.
An occurrence policy offers lifetime coverage for incidents that occur during the policy period, regardless of when the claim is reported. A claims-made policy only covers incidents that occur and are reported within the policy's time frame unless a 'tail' extension is purchased.
Vendor compliance requires third parties to fulfill all legal and policy expectations in the business relationship. Companies can help ensure compliance by implementing risk assessments, evaluations, policies, contracts, and continuous oversight.
Businesses often rely on robust supply chain management software systems to integrate vendor processes and mitigate risk throughout the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, delivery and logistics, and returning stages.
When utilizing vendor lists to collect, organize, and manage third-party information, it is best practice for businesses to determine active vendors, analyze documentation, monitor accounts payable balances, conduct stakeholder assessments, and edit lists as needed.
When implementing a vendor risk management strategy, businesses should begin with smart vendor selection, create a standardized onboarding process, establish contractual standards, maintain due diligence and monitoring, and institute comprehensive auditing and reporting processes.
Modernizing your vendor management process can help you save time, cut costs, evaluate relationships more easily, maintain stronger connections, improve compliance, reduce risks, and enhance visibility.
Vendor compliance software streamlines communications, simplifies compliance management, and improves transparency via an integrated online portal, compliance correction, messaging, automated notices and tools, and much more.
A vendor portal, also known as a supplier portal, is an integrated online platform businesses utilize to manage and connect with third-party suppliers of goods and services.
Risk mitigation and vendor risk management are vital to protecting your company from costly claims, and can be facilitated by utilizing insurance tracking software.
The BCS App integrates seamlessly with some of the most popular B2B software on the market to help you save time and maintain easy access to your data.
Finding pre-qualified vendors is beneficial for effective enterprise risk management, but it isn’t always easy. The BCS Network, available through the BCS App, simplifies the process.
The BCS App provides unmatched protection by collecting, correcting and protecting certificates of insurance, monitoring expiration dates, and much more.
COI tracking for manufacturing is essential to mitigating third-party risks associated with cybersecurity threats, operational disruptions, health and safety liabilities, regulatory compliance, and brand damage.
COI tracking for logistics, transportation, and supply chain management businesses is essential due to third-party risks associated with data breaches, regulatory violations, financial loss, reputation, and contractual liability.
Hospitality businesses that work with third parties may be susceptible to cybersecurity and health & safety risks, requiring COI tracking for hospitality.
Property owners & managers increase their risk when they work with a new vendor, contractor, or tenants, requiring careful COI tracking for real estate.
Full-service COI tracking for business can accommodate changing work levels, free up staff time, save money, maintain the highest standard of third-party risk mitigation, modernize operations, and improve the vendor experience.
Working with compliance analysts can help businesses mitigate third-party risk through insurance tracking, document management, regulatory and financial screenings, and health and safety prequalifications.
Migrating your COI tracking solution may ultimately save you hours of work, but the initial implementation process can be tricky: reviewing your records, choosing an approach, backing up your data, sticking to your methodology, and testing your results.
Developing and implementing an effective risk management plan is essential to mitigating threats to your business. This comprehensive guide explains its importance, outlines techniques for identifying and prioritizing threats, and defines key concepts and checkpoints within this five-step process.
Centralizing your in-house compliance process and documentation can help you save time, conserve space, enhance organization, secure critical information, reduce data loss from human error, improve audit efficiency, increase compliance, enhance visibility, and appear more professional.
Vendor screening can help reduce your liability when taking on third-party subcontractors. Depending on your industry, OFAC debarment screening, EHS screening, financial screening, and legal screening may be beneficial.
Strong compliance management techniques can save your staff time by simplifying inviting and connecting with vendors, streamlining onboarding, centralizing document collection, detecting compliance gaps, automating follow-ups, integrating other tools, and facilitating real-time compliance checks.
A certificate of insurance (COI) is a document that serves as proof of business insurance. It is a snapshot of an insurance policy, containing all the most important details, and it helps protect against third-party risk.
During a certificate of insurance tracking software demo, participants should pay attention to the interface, service level, collection process, integrations, analytics capabilities, industries served, screening options, and special features.
Certificate of insurance tracking software, such as the BCS App, helps companies achieve and maintain compliance via a customizable, user-friendly platform and centralized data hub, which monitor and visualize vendors by compliance status.
You may be able to identify a forged certificate of insurance through telltale signs such as missing contact information, poor quality, inconsistent fonts, and whited-out information.
BCS’s unique, three-step approach to certificate of insurance tracking provides the verification, security, and peace of mind essential to third-party risk mitigation.
The steps to send a certificate of insurance depend on your carrier and recipient, though traditionally required a broker and most recently involve an online form.
Workers’ compensation is a type of insurance that helps pay for an employee’s medical care, lost wages, and other expenses resulting from workplace injuries.
You should consider a certificate of insurance management system if your business works with outside contractors, frequently hires new contractors, doesn’t know if vendors are compliant, and/or lacks the time or expertise to track certificates of insurance.
Hold harmless agreements (aka indemnity agreements) transfer the obligations from one party to another to absolve one or both from liability that may arise from services, work, and/or the nature of the contract.
BCS differentiates itself with comprehensive service, a convenient app, seamless API integrations, a dedicated team, high customer satisfaction, and by serving diverse industries.
A full-service certificate of insurance tracking solution can save time, ensure compliance, reduce risk, support your team, connect you to vendors, automate RFPs, and provide critical insight.
Commercial general liability (CGL) is a type of insurance coverage that protects a business from risks such as bodily harm, property damage, advertising, and personal injuries.
Identifying and analyzing potential risks and strategizing to avoid and reduce them are critical to successful risk management. Useful risk management techniques include certificate of insurance tracking, safety pre-qualification, regulatory screening, and vendor credentialing.
The three most common mistakes in RFPs for COI tracking are failure to identify the reason for tracking vendor insurance, overestimating the levels of compliance of the current program, and focusing on the price instead of the cost.
Organizing certificates of insurance best practices include obtaining a certificate of insurance from each vendor, asking to be named as an additional insured, carefully reviewing the certificate, assessing endorsements, getting an updated certificate at renewal, implementing an organizational scheme, and consulting an insurance professional.
Contractors pollution liability (CPL) is a type of insurance policy that protects contractors from pollution-related risks to help ensure an accident doesn’t turn into a disaster for your business.
While companies assume they won’t be held liable for tort claims arising from work performed by independent contractors, there are exceptions to the rule based on negligence, obligations to the public, and inherently dangerous activities.
Certificate of insurance tracking helps ensure you’re protected from liabilities associated with injuries, overdue projects, substandard work, subcontractor disputes, and other risks within the construction industry.
Collecting all pertinent information, performing a risk assessment, assessing previous renewals, and comparing rates and policies are important steps in the commercial general liability policy renewal process.
Several critical features of a Certificate of Insurance tracking solution include the availability of dedicated compliance professionals, comprehensive document review, and access to vendor networks.
The ability to track certificates of insurance for free depends on a business’ technology, needs, size and complexity, together with in-house expertise. There are a number of free tools and resources available to help.
The main difference between indemnification and insurance is that the former represents the process of transferring loss responsibility within a contractual relationship, and can exist independent of a policy, while the latter represents the actual contract backed by an insurance company.
Proper management of insurance documents, like the certificate of insurance, is integral for maintaining vendor/tenant compliance, protecting your business against damage claims, and more. Doing so properly requires asking the right questions.
The difference between ongoing and completed operations coverage determines how and when subcontractor insurance policies can extend coverage to additional insureds.
Finding the best certificate of insurance (COI) tracking solution is a matter of identifying which ones offer the greatest level of service, can work with international vendors, leverage centralized support teams, and can scale with your business.
Boost your company’s claims management success by having your own insurance policy, requesting certificates of insurance from vendors, adding an indemnity clause to contracts, analyzing and tracking vendor insurance information, and clearly communicating expectations.
Working with vendors brings risks to business arrangements, including potential financial, legal and operational issues. Any company that deals with multiple third-party vendors should consider implementing a vendor risk management strategy.
The certificate of insurance tracking process includes collection and storage, analysis, correction, and follow-ups. The BCS App simplifies this process.
Effective contractual risk transfer strategy includes insurance requirements and the collection of documentation, correction processes and the storage and accessibility of that data.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence agency of the U.S. Department of Treasury that develops and enforces trade sanctions to support homeland security and foreign affairs initiatives.
Thorough tenant screening includes creating tenant criteria, conducting pre-screening interview calls, collecting rental applications, running rental background checks, and following up with tenant references.
While the criteria of a background check is ultimately decided by the employer, a typical candidate screening may include criminal history, vendor credentials, alternate business names, insurance compliance, customer reviews, and Better Business Bureau standing.
Workers' Compensation Insurance is designed to protect both your business and your employees from suffering any more than necessary after a work-related injury claim.
This free, introductory resource guide to 'All Things COI' shares valuable insights and tips on tracking, improving and managing the all-important Certificate of Insurance. Download it today!
Basics of collecting and tracking Notices of Cancellation along with Certificates of Insurance from all of your company's vendors, tenants, and subcontractors.
Notices of insurance cancellation are not always guaranteed. It is important to collect Notice of cancellation endorsements to protect your company from risk.
BCS can help your company reduce third-party risk with our innovative compliance management solutions. Learn how to track vendor insurance using the BCS App today.
