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How to Tell if Your Business Needs a Certificate of Insurance Management System

Tracking your certificates of insurance (COIs) in-house can seem like an easy way to protect your bottom line, but it may actually cost you more than using a certificate of insurance management system. So how do you know when it's time to make the leap and implement a new solution? These signs hint that it's time to weigh your options:

You Work With Outside Contractors

Whenever you work with independent contractors, you open yourself up to new risks. Requiring relevant insurance coverage and collecting certificates of insurance (COIs) is an essential risk management technique. If you occasionally enlist one or two contractors, you may be able to maintain documentation in-house. However, as your contractor pool expands, you’re increasingly likely to need a dedicated management system to track your COIs and ensure compliance. 

 

You Frequently Hire New Contractors

Finding the right contractors, collecting their COIs, and reviewing the documentation to ensure contractual compliance is time-consuming, but important to get right. Some management systems simplify the onboarding process by enabling you to search for qualified vendors in your profile and/or broadcast requests for proposals (RFPs). Contractors may also be able to upload their information directly into the system to cut out the middleman and save your staff time. 

 

You Don’t Know If Your Vendors Are Compliant

While tracking COIs is important, it doesn’t guarantee your contractors will have the coverage you require. Compliance verification is a critical component of third-party liability risk mitigation. If you don’t know whether your vendors are compliant, you probably haven’t put enough effort into the COI review process. A full-service certificate of insurance management solution provides expert guidance from compliance analysts to identify deficiencies, and communicate with vendors and agents to correct coverage.

 

Even if you examine each COI carefully, that doesn’t mean your vendors will remain in compliance throughout your relationship with them. Policies may lapse or expire, leaving you exposed. The right management system can help you monitor expiration dates so that you can update your documentation as quickly as possible. Data analysis can also give you a snapshot of your overall level of compliance without navigating cumbersome spreadsheets

 

Your Volume of COIs Changes

Depending on your industry, COIs may come in when you’re launching a new project. This can lead to sharp fluctuations in the amount of work, with high volumes of COI tracking tasks at times, and virtually none at other moments. Rather than changing your staffing levels or making employees work overtime during critical periods, relying on a certificate of insurance management system facilitates a seamless transition, regardless of the workload. 

 

Your Team Doesn’t Have Enough Time for COI Tracking

Manually tracking COIs typically requires a significant time commitment from your staff. If your employees’ schedules don’t permit this, a management system can reduce the workload. It can also save you money, by eliminating the need to hire additional staff. 

 

Your Employees Lack Insurance Expertise

If your staff doesn’t have extensive experience with COIs, they may struggle to track them, check compliance, and request necessary revisions. Insurance is a complicated topic, and there are many nuances involved. COI management systems aim to make the process easy. However, companies with higher risk or more complicated insurance requirements may prefer to work with a full-service solution with access to expert analysts to guide them through the process and do much of the legwork. 


bcs is the preeminent certificate of insurance tracking solution. Our app-based platform streamlines onboarding, collects COIs, and provides regulatory screenings covering over 600 databases for next-level protection. Schedule a demo to see if bcs is the right certificate of insurance management system for your business.

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