Vendor certificates checked against your requirements before the next work order goes out
Every vendor on a property should carry the insurance your vendor policy requires, and every commercial tenant should carry what its lease requires. The proof usually arrives as an ACORD 25 attached to an email, often without the endorsement that actually makes the owner and your company additional insureds. The agent reads each certificate and endorsement against your requirement set, writes the follow-up and keeps the vendor record current. Your coordinator decides every exception.
Examples use invented names and figures.
What the agent does
- Step 1Reads what arrived
From the shared inbox, a vendor portal upload or a forwarded thread. It reads the ACORD 25, any ACORD 28 a commercial tenant sends for its property coverage, and every endorsement page attached.
- Step 2Checks it against your requirements
Limits by line, the ADDL INSD and SUBR WVD columns, policy dates and named entities are compared with the requirement set for that vendor tier or lease. A Y in the additional insured column counts only once the endorsement or policy wording is on file. Blanket wording goes to a reviewer to confirm it covers your entities.
- Step 3Writes the deficiency request
A short email to the vendor and its insurance agent that names each gap and asks for the endorsement or a corrected certificate. It never asks the agent to type contract references or custom promises onto the certificate.
- Step 4Updates the record and holds work
Expiry dates go into the vendor record in your property management system, and the vendor is flagged so no new work order goes out until the gap closes. Renewal requests go out before the policy ends.
Exceptions and waivers stay with a person, such as accepting a lower umbrella limit from a window cleaner. So does any question that turns on policy wording beyond the endorsement form, and any dispute with a tenant under a lease. The agent shows the gap and the evidence, and a manager records the decision with its reason.
- Certificates reviewed per week and minutes each
- Share compliant on first submission
- Vendors on hold and days to clear
- Policies renewed before they expire
Questions about this agent
We already pay for a COI tracking service. Is this still useful?
Sometimes. Dedicated services collect and score certificates well. The agent helps with the work they hand back to your team, such as exceptions and holds in your property management system. If you track certificates in a spreadsheet today, the agent can do the reading and chasing itself.
Can it read endorsements and not only the ACORD 25?
Yes. It identifies the endorsement and checks the entities it covers. It also checks whether coverage applies to completed operations as well as ongoing work. Pages it cannot read with confidence go to a person with the page image.
Our Texas vendors send certificates that say "per contract". Is that a problem?
Texas Insurance Code section 1811.154 says a certificate may not reference requirements in another contract, including a contract for services. The agent flags that wording and asks for the endorsement, which is the document that gives the owner and your company rights under the policy.