What Every Property Manager Needs To Know About Certificates of Insurance

Why it is important for property managers to track COIs

As a property manager, you have the responsibility of making sure everyone leasing or working on your property has adequate and compliant insurance coverage. Not only does this require collecting certificates of insurance (COIs)  but also verifying all parties are in compliance. It doesn’t end there, you must also stay on top of all ongoing renewals. Tracking these COIs can be overwhelming and time consuming but is critical when it comes to protecting your business, a failure to do so can expose you to serious risk. Having a process in place will take the stress out of confusion and having to keep track of paperwork or in a spreadsheet. 

When managing properties you have many responsibilities and when operating in larger properties and in different locations this can be challenging if you do not have a good system to manage all the required insurance documentation. One of the most common and potentially costly mistakes made by business owners is failing to properly manage their insurance requirements. 

While managing vendors, you have to make sure that they submit a certificate of insurance. A COI is like a guarantee that the vendor has properly insured itself against liability claims. You must make sure coverage meets your own insurance requirements, which could include limits, types of coverage and even endorsements.

The COI  will show what types of coverage and how much each vendor has purchased for its contractors’ workers’ compensation and general liability limits. It will also indicate whether any endorsements have been added or removed from their policies as well as when they were last updated. The COI should list all parties covered under the policy including subcontractors, employees and independent contractors hired by those subcontractors.

Many insurance submissions are not compliant 

Failing to enforce these requirements can put you at risk of being sued if an incident takes place on your premises, even if it was caused by one of your contractors or vendors. One way to avoid this risk is to make sure that you have a well-documented process in place for tracking COIs from all of your vendors and contractors. The sooner you can establish such a process, the better it will be for your business.

Automated Solution for Insurance tracking to ensure compliance

Manually tracking insurance can be chaotic with keeping track of spreadsheets, verifying handwritten pieces of information and keeping documents organized. As a property manager you do not need to let these issues keep you up at night with an automated system behind you can sleep well knowing these are being handled. The insured's COIs should be managed centrally by the property manager so that it can be obtained at any time, anywhere with just one click. As a Property Manager with all of the things you need to worry about, insurance compliance does not need to be one of them with PINS. 

PINS offers insurance tracking tools to make your life easier:

• Certificate Management: A COI tracking system ensures that all vendors are covered under appropriate policies at all times.  Mitigate potential risk associated with vendor non-compliance by allowing Property Managers to quickly access information about individual policy coverage status without having to manually check each one individually every month!
• Automatically send renewal notifications: Easily request coverage, analyze certificates and automatically send renewal notifications. Subcontractors, vendors, drivers and agents can all easily log into PINS to provide Insurance Documentation, at no extra cost.
• Insurance Templates - One way to avoid operational risk is to make sure that you have a standard process in place for tracking COIs from all of your vendors and contractors. The sooner you can establish such a process, the better it will be for your business.  Templates structure your requirements into a standard workflow, increasing efficiency and compliance.
• Compliance Status - Property managers play a critical role in managing risk for their Tenants. Property managers need to have an effective risk management program in place to ensure that they are not at fault for any losses that occur on their properties. Managing COIs in PINS raises Insurance compliance across the board.

With PINS you will eliminate risk, reduce costs and increase compliance. 

Book a demo and see how PINS can ease your insurance tracking process!