Why Centralize Your In-House Compliance Process & Documentation?

Careful documentation and compliance practices are the backbone of effective risk management. To safeguard your business from third-party risk, you need to ensure your vendors hold appropriate insurance coverage. That’s why collecting, reviewing, and tracking certificates of insurance (COIs) is so critical. However, how you manage this documentation can be just as important. Centralizing your process is key to maintaining efficiency and efficacy, and it also carries other potential benefits. 

Save Time

Processing, reviewing, and updating COIs and other documents are more efficient with a dedicated solution built for the task, giving your staff more time to focus on other duties. Not only that, but it is also often significantly easier, saving your employees unnecessary frustration. 

Conserve Space

Filing paper copies of vendor documents requires sufficient space. Since you should keep paperwork for occurrence-based insurance, even after the policy has expired, your documents can really pile up. Cloud-based platforms increasingly allow vendors to submit their information directly for indefinite digital storage, eliminating the need for paper copies. 

Enhance Organization

A refined organizational scheme is nearly impossible without centralized documentation and compliance review. Using one solution ensures that everyone knows where to collect information and where to find it if an issue arises. Additionally, it puts the focus more squarely on the documents themselves, rather than the process. 

Secure Critical Information

Maintaining critical information in one location makes it easier to control who has access, which is important for your vendors’ privacy and the overall security of your company. Cloud-based platforms can be especially useful, since your data may still be secure if your in-house systems fail or you experience a breach. 

Reduce Data Loss From Human Error

With a decentralized model, it’s all too easy for employees to inadvertently misplace or delete information. Maintaining just one repository limits this likelihood, and reduces the risk of inexperienced document handlers accessing the files and making a mistake.

Improve Audit Efficiency

Auditing your COIs can provide a clearer snapshot of your company’s potential exposures. However, this process can be challenging and time-consuming. With COI tracking consolidated on one platform, you can conduct regular audits in a fraction of the time. 

Increase Compliance

Whenever a policy is renewed, you need to acquire a new COI. If you do not, a vendor may fall out of compliance unnoticed. A unified system enables your compliance analysts to spot and correct gaps in coverage, and ensure you have the most recent documentation necessary to mitigate your risk.

Enhance Visibility

Everyone with the right permissions has full visibility into your documentation. This enables them to refer to insurance information, monitor what jobs a vendor has worked on, review notes, and more. Transparency can improve efficiency by preventing employees from having to seek out others whenever they need data about a contractor’s insurance coverage.

Appear More Professional

Your compliance process doesn’t just affect your employees; it also affects your vendors. A streamlined process that is as easy for contractors as for employees can make you look more professional, putting you in a better position to attract the best candidates. Easy COI inputting can be beneficial for everyone involved.

bcs offers two sophisticated solutions to centralize your compliance process and documentation. The self-service option provides a cloud-based platform with an intuitive interface and automation features to simplify your team’s COI tracking efforts. The full-service solution couples the software with expert analysts to help you at every stage in the process, including collection, review, and correction. Contact us to learn how bcs can help centralize your documentation!