COI Tracker
Verifying Insurance Certificates and Detecting Fraud Claims

In an era where companies can easily entangle themselves in lawsuits and claims due to unclear processes, verifying, and reporting Certificates of Insurance (COIs) has become a critical aspect for any organization. Founded three years ago, COI Tracker is the culmination of software development expertise, insurance industry knowledge and low-cost cloud computing resources. The result is a high-value, low-cost solution that organizations of any size can use to effectively track and manage COIs. The company implements cutting-edge Machine Learning technology for reading and verifying insurance certificates. This solution has very effective OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning abilities, capturing COI data with almost 99 percent accuracy. “Our certificate verification solution is executed successfully in several small and mid-sized firms. It is also suited for enterprises that need to collect, track and verify COIs from sub-vendors and vendors,” explains Frank Stephens, Co-Founder of COI Tracker.

Traditionally, organizations would need to hire third parties to attain a COI, and then verify it to ensure compliance with the insurance requirements. COI Tracker eliminates this entire process with its full-service COI tracking solution and saves a substantial amount of time and resources otherwise spent in manually collecting and verifying these documents. The company also teams up with brokers and insurance agents and provides its white-labeled solution to match their designs and branding. A powerful COI tracking solution under a company’s brand and logo is a sure-fire way to develop new business opportunities and create longer-term customer relationships quickly.

COI Tracker’s solution is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that leverages the world’s leading technology platforms including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Netlify to provide a fast and effective user interface and secure API. The API allows clients to add and extract data securely from their existing systems. “The clients have the leeway to add their subcontractors, vendors or tenants as a set into the COI tracker platform and compare it with the insurance requirements loaded into the system,” explains Frank. The solution will then automatically email these vendors requesting certificates of insurance.

The company’s OCR technology recognizes and analyzes the ensuing email reply for an insurance certificate that matches the clients’ requisites. If the COI does not meet the requirements, an automatic email is sent, notifying the vendor or subcontractor that it has been rejected. For instance, when one client sends a request for five million dollars in general liability and workers compensation and receives a certificate covering only three million dollars in general liability and nothing else, it will receive the notification email including the requirements needed for compliance. Frank explains further stating, “certificate verification is a process of repeated data exchange on behalf of our clients and their vendors until the proper certificate of insurance is sent in.” Once the client submits a COI matching the requirements the clients are marked in the system as compliant and will be automatically notified before their certificate’s insurance renewal date, starting the process over once again.

COI Tracker is a Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) solution, hosted and managed with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, leveraging industry standard APIs, cutting-edge machine learning and software development practices to bring a high-value Certificate of Insurance Tracking and Management platform to clients at a low price point.

Using the certificate verification capabilities, COI Tracker solved a difficult case for a client plagued by two problems. The client was a large, multi-million dollar construction contractor with over 5000 subcontractors spread over five states in the Midwest. Their staff could not keep up with the numerous requests and complex management of the COIs. Additionally, some subcontractors would falsify certificates, which incurred huge losses for the client. Once COI Tracker stepped in, the client finally had a clear understanding of all their insurance certificates and could easily identify ones that needed renewal and fraudulent ones. The organization did not have to hire additional staff and efficiently used its current employees to track all certificate verifications efficiently.

While some competitors may charge exorbitant amounts for an onboarding process that could take months, CIO Tracker’s client-oriented technology does the same in a week and at no cost. The fast-paced solution is also one of the very few that can verify if a certificate is compliant or not within just a few minutes, in contrast to the industry average of several hours. In addition to providing swift services for insurance certificate verification, COI Tracker is currently developing plugins that work with construction management systems as well as vendor management systems and integrate them directly into the COI tracking solution.

The core goals of COI Tracker are: to make COI tracking easier and more effective for the client, to make it a great experience for the vendor, and to make it cost effective so that smaller companies can benefit from automated COI management. To that end, the company has designed its services to eliminate the struggle of verifying COIs manually, and instead automate everything such that a few taps of a button accomplish any desired task.