A certificate of insurance (COI) is a document from an insurer that proves a business has valid insurance. It is usually checked before starting an engagement to ensure a business has the right insurance. A COI is issued by an insurance company, agency, or broker to provide evidence that an individual or business has insurance coverage. However, COIs get out-of-date or need to be updated, so they should be periodically maintained or renewed. For most agencies, this is a manual and laborious process, and sometimes errors occur leading to serious problems. Fortunately, there is a solution to automate this process and eliminate the issues created by manual work.
COIs are often shared as physical documents or email attachments, therefore they can become outdated. To prevent this, agency staff have to check and constantly verify that the information on the form is still valid. Agents and brokers still rely heavily on manual processes to review COIs, which is time intensive and complex and is an administrative burden. With the average office worker spending several hours a day reading and replying to dozens of email messages, managing the email back and forth can become a full-time assignment.
Each certificate has to be carefully reviewed for limits, exclusions, and other criteria, and it must also be tracked for expiration dates. As expiration nears, a new request for an updated COI needs to be made. Monitoring dozens or hundreds of certificates adds to the email burden.
Manual work also creates the potential for errors and omissions which can cost clients millions of dollars if the information is inaccurate.
Using spreadsheets and calendar reminders is a common approach in trying to monitor expirations. But these methods are not scalable or efficient.
Some agencies are trying to automate the way they share COI information with their core AMS but often find these solutions lack flexibility in specific areas. Certificial offers an online solution that generates alerts for issues like inadequate coverage, expired policies, or other lapses. It is a real-time system to ensure businesses have continuous, compliant insurance coverage.
Certificial's Smart COI Network connects all insurance parties via a single platform. Agents can issue COIs by integrating their AMS with Certificial. Instead of a paper document, Certificial’s smart COI is a digital document that is dynamically updated and easily accessible online from anywhere.
Agencies can automate the process of adding or changing COI information via an API (Application Programming Interface). But they can have trouble integrating their AMS with Certificial’s COI solution to track coverage and identify gaps against client and vendor requirements.
Synatic and Certificial have partnered to create a real-time insurance tracking and management solution. The Synatic Data Integration Hub (DIH) can manage the extraction and consolidation of data and set up an automated process to update COIs in Certificial. It does this through pre-built integrations and a fully customizable API management suite that connects various AMS’s with Certificial’s COI solution. Triggers can be set up in the Synatic DIH to instruct the integrations to run, enabling an AMS to communicate with Certificial in a time-sensitive manner. Agents and brokers can use Synatic’s DIH to convert COI requests into automated digital requests that can be shared with insured parties and certificate holders.
The Synatic DIH can accurately read, interpret, and incorporate COI information into an AMS from the Certificial system.
The automation and consolidation of COI data between their AMS and Certificial's solution eliminates the need for constant verification, enabling agencies to confidently share up-to-date and accurate COIs with clients and vendors.
Furthermore, Synatic empowers agents and brokers to effortlessly share COIs with insureds and certificate holders. By digitizing the entire COI process, agencies can provide stakeholders with instant access to their certificates and streamline communication channels. This ensures that COI requests are processed efficiently, allowing agencies to convert them into automated digital requests.
To learn more about how seamless integration can streamline your COI management process, contact Synatic today.
