Article Type: News Article

Insurance compliance software often gets slapped together by software developers who haven’t spent any meaningful time understanding insurance. Even more unfortunate is the fact that their customers inevitably suffer from low compliance ratios, software-first support, and a relationship that centers around the platform instead of the product. It’s no coincidence 80% of CertFocus’s clients come to them from competitors.

Recently, CertFocus clients who have spent time in the industry shared their experience with the company. Let’s dig into what they had to say!

Clients repeatedly named CertFocus a critical part of their risk management program. What separates CertFocus from competitors, and even in-house compliance programs, is, as 17-year veteran of risk management Peacola Johnson puts it, expertise: “We wanted not just anyone to look at our process, we wanted people with technical knowledge of insurance actually handling the compliance.” When CertFocus has their credentialed professionals review documentation, they pick out patterns and trends that software passes right over.

The value of having an insurance-savvy team focusing on your compliance program doesn’t stop at the massive boost to compliance ratio. Nermine Demopoulus points out that while “…we started at less than a 40% compliance ratio and that has more than doubled into the 90s,” she also emphasizes how much time her staff saves after outsourcing the process.

Even better than saving time is saving money, and Lisa Kerr is adamant that partnering with CertFocus allows her staff to be “…analyzing the certificates and looking at where we might have gaps and where we might further improve compliance.” That positions her team to better negotiate their insurance rule, keep their rates down, and save a premium. It’s hard to deny the unique nature of a relationship with CertFocus, where support isn’t just troubleshooting software.

Ensuring your company remains safe from risk and large liability, especially when working with a large number of vendors, is absolutely crucial. George Zaroogian, who has worked in the insurance industry for more than two decades, said that without a program like CertFocus in place, his company would be massively exposed. “This is something that is critical to our risk management program. We’ve been very happy with them, they do an excellent job,” he said.

What draws clients like these to CertFocus is not only the doubling of compliance ratios or even the hands-on analysis that saves them big. It’s the ability to rest easy at night knowing their risks are being managed by experts. That peace of mind is invaluable.

As a Risk Manager and an insurance expert, you understand the importance of Certificate of Insurance Compliance to your risk transfer process. Therefore, the services you seek from a COI management provider need to be more comprehensive than those that simply point out a problem, without offering sound service solutions.

The services provided by basic COI tracking companies may help identify compliance deficiencies, but on its own, most COI tracking companies lack the solution-based approach that most businesses require. The complexities involved in fixing a compliance issue can be extremely time-consuming, costly and challenging. The industry insight and insurance knowledge required to help achieve proper COI Compliance only comes from experienced insurance professionals. With a nearly 99% customer retention rate, CertFocus has proven time and time again that we have the people, tools, and knowledge to consistently support a diverse range of organizations. CertFocus is not a COI tracking company, we are a COI compliance service.  There is a tremendous difference between our business model and the rest of the industry.

Our goal is to be more than just a vendor; we want to be an extension of your risk management department- a true partner. Our long-standing track record of excellence supported by the industry’s most dynamic customer service- for insurance professionals, by insurance professionals. That might be one reason why over 60% of our current customers came to us after trying other services. Organizations soon realize that other providers in our industry offer basic non-responsive cookie cutter approaches, with lackluster service, and limited resources that end up wasting time and money.

That is just one reason why we provide a dedicated CIC, CISR, CPCU, and CRIS certified account manager for each of our customers. These team members are trained to help solve any problems that may arise. Other companies stop at COI tracking, but that is where CertFocus begins.

Whether you are a mature and robust corporation or a quickly growing business, you can’t afford to let your COI tracking vendor’s poor results and service turn your risk transfer program into a rotting cavity. CertFocus sets the standard in the COI compliance industry because we solve problems, put people first, and use our expertise to help you rest easy.

Trust is a vital ingredient for any successful business partnership. And while it would be great if we only ever had to trust that others were doing the right thing, there are vital elements that must exist for trust to develop; superior customer service, dependability, and results. CertFocus strives to become a valued and trusted partner for all their customers by delivering the highest levels of compliance in the Certificate of Insurance (COI) Management Industry. In equity partnership with the Insurance Services Office (now part of the Verisk Analytics Family of Companies), CertFocus offers our clients a COI management solution designed to deliver the most flexible, accurate, and reliable results in the industry. This is why, when it comes to ensuring certificate of insurance compliance from vendors, subcontractors, suppliers, tenants, and franchises, CertFocus sets the industry standard.

As a fully flexible service designed by insurance professionals for insurance professionals, our service is customer service focused and is supported by software, rather than simply being like most other providers in our industry, a basic COI software tracking technology. Therefore, by focusing on being a service first, CertFocus is able to work with each customer to design and develop a fully customized compliance platform to ensure that your specific needs are being met. We are proud of the fact that our 180+ customers receive tremendous value from our solution, and benefit from over 90+% COI compliance. With a strong U.S.-based infrastructure, flexible service solutions, and most importantly CIC, CRIS, CISR and CPCU credentialed account managers dedicated to helping you, CertFocus delivers the most comprehensive COI management solution in the industry.

With CertFocus, you have a trustworthy partner who can ensure compliance from your vendors, and provide you with significant savings through economies of scale. CertFocus frees up your valuable time and resources, allowing you to focus on managing the process while CertFocus does all the heavy lifting. CertFocus provides you with ad hoc reporting and by being SaaS-based, is accessible from any device, integrating with most all AP, Single Sign-on, SAP, PeopleSoft, JDE, Oracle and many other third-party systems. You will appreciate our permission-based user privileges and the fact that our flexible infrastructure allows for unlimited hierarchies, and the assurance of unlimited requirement sets.

When you need to ensure vendor, subcontractor, supplier, tenant, and franchisee compliance, CertFocus is there to be your trusted partner and to provide the highest level of compliance and the most robust service possible in the Certificate of Insurance Industry. CertFocus works with each customer to design and develop the customized compliance platform they need to ensure their specific needs are being met. We are more than a software- it is our people behind the solution who are there to get you results. We continue to make significant investments into our people and our world class operations infrastructure- and as a result, into our customers- that no other provider can possibly match.

Growing evidence suggests certificate of insurance (COI) management services must go beyond the basic service of certificate tracking to actually facilitate an increased level of COI compliance. On average, seven out of ten received COIs from your vendors are shown to be out of compliance. The risk presented to companies is very real, and the need for companies to do more than just track COIs is clear. With dedicated account management from seasoned and credentialed insurance professionals for each customer, CertFocus transcends typical vendor compliance tracking, and institutes a true Culture of Compliance.

The complexities involved in reviewing COIs relies on human experience, and insurance domain expertise with technological support for complete accuracy and efficiency. Expert and credentialed insurance professionals review documentation and identify the nuances, trends, and patterns that machine-based recognition systems fail to comprehend. Once these human-identified deficiencies are rectified, specialized technology can perform quality assurance checks and generate reports.

When analyzing the opportunity for high-level economies of scale, outsourcing services for COI management can level the knowledge and expertise that in-house resources often lack. The specialized infrastructure of dedicated COI management provided by CertFocus, delivers this expertise in a cost-effective manner at a fraction of the price of in-house operations. Furthermore, using a reputable and proven COI management company can make your business more attractive to insurers, and limit your exposure in the event of vendor failures.

“CertFocus provides dedicated account management from credentialed insurance professionals to each customer,” explains Jeff Krieger, Vice President Marketing of CertFocus. “No other company provides this level of service. To employ the level of expertise we provide, it would be cost prohibitive for anyone else. We are in our own league; honestly, we do not have any competitors.”

While others may claim to employ the skills of insurance professionals, none aside from CertFocus provide dedicated account managers with that level of insurance knowledge. Other vendors in our industry provide account managers that may be inexperienced employees – incapable of answering in-depth questions first-hand, and are missing out on the critical coverage details that the CertFocus insurance professionals are trained to identify. Placing credentialed insurance professionals in account manager roles for drastically improved COI management performance and enhanced customer service- is part of our Culture of Compliance at CertFocus.

“We understand the ongoing demands certificate management places on organizations – and as such, we provide each customer with a seasoned CIC, CPCU, CISR, and/or CRIS certified insurance professional as an Account Manager,” says Krieger.