Four Things We Verify When We Handle Your Certificate of Insurance Monitoring

COI Management | August 25, 2022

Collecting a certificate of insurance only goes so far to guarantee that you have coverage in the event of an accident to property or a person. There are many reasons that you may think you are covered if you’ve obtained a certificate, but extra steps are needed to verify coverage. PlusOne Solutions closes the gap by not only collecting the certificate of insurance but by verifying coverage, confirming your requirements, watching for fraudulent certificates, and working cancellation notices. 

Four Things We Verify When We Handle Your Certificate of Insurance Monitoring

Valid and Active Insurance Policies

When we process your contractor’s certificate of insurance, we confirm that the policies received are current and active with the insurance agent. Part of this process includes capturing the insurance agent’s contact information and email. When communicating via email, if we are unable to successfully send an email due to an invalid email, missing email, or full inbox, then we call the agent’s office to obtain a new email address.

We do not stop there; we reach out to the agent after a month and again mid-way through the policy to confirm that the policies are still active and have not been canceled. 

Your Compliance Requirements

We track each requirement that you feel is necessary to obtain and verify to mitigate your risks. This includes requirements such as policy limits, additional insured, and waiver of subrogation. When one of these items is missing or insufficient, we reach out to the insurance agent and the contractor notifying them of what is missing specific to your organization. Once we have received everything that is required for compliance, then we let both the insurance agent and the contractor know that all items needed have been met. 

Fraudulent Certificates of Insurance

Unfortunately, it is not unusual to receive a certificate of insurance that has been altered or created by a contractor to meet your insurance requirements. Our insurance specialists have been trained to identify when this happens and to take the necessary action. There are many things that will alert us to a fraudulent COI, including the use of policy limits that are not applicable, special verbiage that does not apply, and inconsistent font. In addition, our frequent contact with the insurance agent naturally brings any to the surface when we verify and report coverage. Once a contractor has submitted a fraudulent COI, then the account is flagged, we contact the contractor, and your organization is notified. 

Canceled Policies  

When we track certificates of insurance for you, we communicate to the insurance agents and carriers to include PlusOne Solution’s address as a certificate holder. This allows us to receive mail notifications from carriers such as cancellation notices as well as additional insured cancellation notices. Many insurance carriers continue to send notices in the mail and working this long-outdated method is still important. 

In addition to working mail cancellations, we can be notified of canceled policies when verifying insurance and working with the agent on your insurance requirements.

As part of your certificate of insurance monitoring, we will call your contractor to notify them that we received a notice of cancellation and work to obtain reinstatement, or if they have changed insurance agents, a new certificate of insurance. 

Taking these extra steps is important to make sure that coverage remains in place and meets the requirements that your organization has determined is important to reduce financial and operational risks.  

Contents are provided for information purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Users are reminded to seek legal counsel with respect to their obligations and use of PlusOne Solutions services.

About PlusOne Solutions

PlusOne Solutions has been an industry leader in the risk management field by specializing in compliance programs that meet the complex challenges of geographically dispersed contractors, vendors, and employee networks. PlusOne Solutions protects companies from possible financial, legal, and reputational risks associated with contractor and vendor relationships while creating safer work environments. To learn more, visit https://www.PlusOneSolutions.net.