What’s your strategy for certificate of insurance management at your commercial real estate (CRE) portfolio or building?
Certificate of insurance management can be a complicated and time-consuming process – especially if you’re tracking certificates of insurance manually. In this blog, you’ll learn:
- What is a Certificate of Insurance (COI)?
- What’s the problem with managing certificates of insurance?
- How to stay compliant and manage risk with a certificate of insurance management strategy
- How to simplify certificate of insurance management with automation
- The costly difference between COI tracking software vs. manual tracking methods
- Why the right certificate of insurance tracking software saves you time and money
What is a Certificate of Insurance?
A certificate of insurance (COI) verifies the existence of an insurance policy and summarizes the key aspects and conditions of the policy. A company or contractor will have difficulty securing clients without a COI. Additionally, most hirers don’t want to assume the risk of any costs that might be caused by the contractor or provider.
What’s the Problem with Managing Certificates of Insurance?
The biggest hurdle to certificate of insurance tracking is that it takes a ton of time. With labor shortage as a top concern for the CRE industry, time is something many property teams just don’t have.
CRE professionals in a recent survey said that managing certificates of insurance is their most time-consuming task. They also said that automating this task would be helpful.
And many CRE firms have a certificate of insurance compliance rating under 50%. That’s a huge problem. If you’re out of compliance, you can risk multimillion-dollar claims.
Certificate of Insurance Management: Compliance & Managing Risk
The right system can automate many of the manual tasks that comes with certificate of insurance tracking. Certificate of insurance tracking software can protect your business by managing your risk and saving you time (and money) by avoiding costly claims.
There are many moving parts of compliance, such as expiring and missing certificates of insurance. It’s difficult to know everything that’s going on at any given time. Much less real-time updates. You’re more likely to have a costly claim if you aren’t aware of outdated certificates of insurance.
Certificate of insurance tracking software makes compliance easy by:
- automatically tracking certificates of insurance;
- offers a risk overview; and
- includes expert support.
At a glance, you can see which certificates are valid, expiring, or missing. You can renew certificates before they expire and source missing certificates of insurance. That means your property will be fully compliant (and protected).
Simplify COI Management with Automation
Tracking COIs usually involves manually entering certificate data, which takes up a significant amount of time. However, with certificate of insurance management software you can automatically:
- manage all your certificates, requirements, and more from a central place;
- gain immediate visibility into certificate of insurance status for all your vendors, suppliers, and tenants; and
- easily enable agents to upload certificates of insurance directly.
COI Tracking Software vs. Manual Tracking Methods
Many CRE firms track certificates of insurance manually. But again, that’s a big contributing factor to many of those firms having a certificate of insurance compliance rating under 50%.
Let’s look at the same scenario for those using certificate of insurance management software and for those who manually track COIs.
Scenario 1: With COI Tracking Software
If you use certificate of insurance tracking software, you can manage all certificates and requirements in one central place. Your certificate of insurance tracking software gives you immediate visibility into the COI status for all your vendors and suppliers. That makes it easy to protect your property when you hire a vendor for maintenance. For example, say you need to hire a painter to repair a scuffed wall in your lobby.
There’s no room for questioning the COI for the painter. That’s because the vendor uploaded the certificate directly through your certificate of insurance tracking software. Unfortunately, the painter falls off their ladder and sprains their ankle. Your property isn’t liable.
As a result, your building remains compliant, and you reduce the risk of costly claims.
Scenario 2: Manual COI Tracking Methods
Your team still uses paper processes to track certificates of insurance. They are overwhelmed by COI paperwork, leading to a high risk of errors and incorrect COI data.
You unknowingly hire a painter with an out-of-date certificate of insurance to repair a scuffed wall in your lobby. You didn’t know this because your vendor certificates were not properly tracked. As a result, this and other certificates of insurance have been slipping through the cracks.
Speaking of slipping, the painter falls off their ladder and sprains their ankle. Your property is now liable. Your compliance rating takes a hit, and your property is slapped with a costly lawsuit that takes months to resolve.
How to Minimize Risk (and Costs)
Compliance is complicated, time-consuming, and ever-changing. But if you aren’t in compliance, you increase your risk and can run into costly claims.
Certificate of insurance management software makes compliance easy by automatically tracking COIs. And the right certificate of insurance tracking software costs much less compared to hiring someone to manage compliance. So, you can manage risk without risking your budget.
Certificate of insurance management software is one way that can help make a huge impact to your bottom line. Discover five quick steps to increasing net operating income across your CRE portfolio in the free eBook, “The CRE Tech Guide to Boosting NOI.”
