The Most Important Features of a Certificate of Insurance Tracking Solution

Whether you’re looking to upgrade from a spreadsheet-based system or thinking about an alternative to your current outsourced tracker, here are several key features that should be on your list for any solution.

Collect & Track COIs

It might seem too obvious to mention, but the ability to collect and track is the most basic function of any COI solution. However, the degree to which this can be done automatically is something that is worth considering as part of your evaluation.

Beyond this, the additional capabilities of a COI tracker are where the true benefits for productivity and risk mitigation lie for your business. 

Document Review From a Dedicated Compliance Team

The utility and peace of mind derived from deploying an automated COI collection and tracking tool depends entirely upon what happens after collection. While tracking expiration dates is important for ensuring ongoing coverage, the best COI solutions offer access to expert compliance knowledge and insight on top of this. There’s a huge difference between knowing when your vendor’s coverage runs out, and knowing whether the level of that coverage appropriately shields your business. And it’s a difference that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the event of litigation.

With this in mind, if your team does not have the expertise or bandwidth to review documents, it’s imperative to choose a solution with dedicated, experienced compliance specialists who can review documents to assess their validity, extent of coverage, risk exposure, and more.

Meet Due Diligence & Coverage Compliance Requirements

In the world of commercial insurance, there is nothing more devastating to a business than discovering a claim is ineligible because of non-compliance or a lapse in coverage. As such, your tracking solution should enable you to audit COIs for compliance across a range of areas, including insurance policies and contract requirements, ACORD forms, endorsement language, workers’ compensation regulations, and more.

If your current solution simply checks boxes, it’s not doing everything that can be done to protect your business from unforeseen events. As such, when considering a different remedy, be sure to look for functions related to meeting due diligence and coverage compliance requirements.

Robust Analytics & Reporting

At its core, risk management is about data. The more you can gather about your business, your vendors, and the potential risks you face, the better equipped you are to make educated decisions to reduce such exposure and, ultimately, ensure that your business continues to prosper.

A COI tracking solution with advanced analytics and reporting capabilities helps to organize that data and harness it so business leaders can gain better insights and, ultimately, make better decisions.

Simple Vendor Onboarding 

Tracking vendors manually can be a frustrating, time-consuming process, especially if you frequently work with new companies and contractors. To ease this burden, consider how your COI tracking solution handles the onboarding process for new vendors. For example, the BCS App provides click-and-connect functionality, enabling vendors to submit their own information, among many other advantages. This quick, painless solution can save hours of effort that might otherwise be spent tracking down and manually entering details.

Network Access

One particular advantage of managing your COIs with a dedicated tracking solution is the ability to tap into an existing network of vendors. In addition to helping cut down onboarding times, such interconnectivity also provides a ready-made talent pool for RFP requests—saving time, effort, resources, and money regarding upcoming projects.

BCS is the leader in certificate of insurance (COI) tracking solutions with its easy-to-use app-based platform. The self-service solution gives you access to this powerful tool, while the full-service option also includes assistance from a team of industry experts to help you every step of the way. If you would like more information about complete and accurate certificate of insurance tracking, verification, and monitoring, download “The 9 Fundamentals of Vendor Insurance Review” white paper, or schedule a demo today.