As best as I can recall, the first article I wrote about certificates of insurance (COIs) was in 2002, over two decades ago. For the next four years, I wrote more on that subject than any other property/casualty issue, culminating with the publication of a white paper in January 2007. That white paper is still available by searching for “Certificates of Insurance Resources” at IndependentAgent.com.
Following the publication of that white paper, the Big “I” offered a three-hour webinar in 2007 attended by about 3,000 industry professionals over several broadcasts. This article shares the title of that original webinar. The webinar was updated and presented again in 2010 and 2013. In the years following that, it seemed that the entire issue, for the most part, had settled down. The last seminar or webinar in which I discussed COI issues was 2017.
I believe the last time I addressed a certificate of insurance issue in this Insurance Journal column was at least four years ago. However, increasingly in the past year or so, I’ve received quite a few inquiries about COIs, with many of the questions being identical to those from 20-plus years ago. Perhaps this is due to a new generation of industry personnel, as well as a new generation of contractors, lenders, etc.?
While I retired from the Big “I” at the end of 2016, I still serve as a volunteer faculty member on their Virtual University (VU) and get questions from their member agents almost daily. In late April, the VU faculty received the inquiry below from a Michigan agent.
“We are in the process of launching a client portal for our commercial clients where they have the ability to re-issue previously issued Certificates of Liability Insurance (ACORD 25) and issue new certificates for holders, as well. The program we are using [name of online system redacted] allows us to give them access to ‘free form’ the summary portion of the Description of Operations.
“If a client issues a certificate through that portal, we are notified and able to track who issued it as well as what language they put in the Description of Operations field. The goal is to teach clients to only put job numbers, location addresses, or the like in that field so they can satisfy requestor requirements.
