Automated Certificate of Insurance Audits: Ensuring Compliance and Reducing Third-Party Risk

Risk Transfer Specialists in General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners face a daily reality: thousands of third-party Certificates of Insurance (COIs), contract agreements, and vendor onboarding documents that must be reviewed, validated, and tracked. A single oversight—like a lapsed policy or missing endorsement—can swing liability back to the owner or property manager and convert a preventable vendor loss into a first-party claim. The challenge is real, the volume is relentless, and manual review simply cannot keep pace.

Nomad Data’s Doc Chat changes the equation. Purpose-built for insurance documentation, Doc Chat acts as an AI-powered COI auditor that ingests entire vendor files, cross-checks ACORD forms against underlying endorsements and contract requirements, and flags non-compliance and lapsed coverage before work begins or renewals lapse. In minutes, Risk Transfer Specialists can run a portfolio-wide audit, ask natural-language questions like “List vendors with expired GL or missing AI/PNC,” and receive page-linked answers that stand up to legal, audit, and executive scrutiny.

Why COI Compliance Is Uniquely Hard in GL & Construction and Property & Homeowners

In General Liability & Construction, risk transfer hinges on precise contractual risk requirements and the actual policy endorsements backing those requirements. For owners, developers, and general contractors, the details matter: Additional Insured (AI) status for ongoing and completed operations, primary and non-contributory wording, waiver of subrogation, and per-project aggregate limits. A checked box on an ACORD 25 is not determinative; the enforceable protection typically resides in ISO endorsements such as CG 20 10 (ongoing), CG 20 37 (completed operations), per-project aggregate endorsements (e.g., CG 25 03), primary and non-contributory (e.g., CG 20 01 or equivalent carrier wording), and waiver of transfer of rights of recovery (often CG 24 04 or carrier-specific equivalents). Construction claim complexity, long-tail exposures, and multi-tier subcontracting amplify the risk if anything is missed or coverage lapses mid-project.

In Property & Homeowners, property managers, HOA boards, and REIT operations juggle dozens or hundreds of vendors—landscapers, roofers, snow removal contractors, security firms, plumbers, and electricians—each with varying General Liability, Auto, Umbrella/Excess, and Workers’ Compensation policies. The exposure is broad and frequent: slip-and-falls on common areas, contractors’ completed operations, water damage from plumbing work, or roof-related wind claims. Requirements frequently include AI status for the association or property owner, primary and non-contributory wording, and waivers of subrogation across GL, Auto, and sometimes WC. The same pitfalls apply: stale or falsified COIs, mismatched entity names, missing additional insured endorsement for completed ops, or evidence of property coverage that doesn’t match the contract’s requirement (e.g., ACORD 28/27 issued but no relevant property endorsement for waiver of subrogation).

Across both lines of business, the nuance is that COIs are snapshots, not contracts. They’re designed to evidence coverage, not to grant it. Real protection lives in the policies and endorsements. Ensuring that the named insured, coverage limits, effective dates, and endorsement language align precisely with the contract is where Risk Transfer Specialists add their highest value—and where scale overwhelms manual processes.

How COI Review Is Handled Manually Today

Most organizations still manage COI compliance with spreadsheets, shared drives, and a patchwork of email reminders. A Risk Transfer Specialist or compliance analyst opens each COI, verifies the named insured, policy numbers, coverage types and limits, effective/expiration dates, and looks for checkboxes indicating AI, waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory. Then comes the critical (and laborious) step: requesting and reviewing the underlying policy endorsements to confirm what the COI claims. Analysts must reconcile these documents against contract clauses that can vary by project, property, or vendor type. The process might look like this:

• Receive a COI (often ACORD 25 for liability; ACORD 28/27 for property evidence) and store it in a shared folder.
• Transcribe key data into a spreadsheet tracker: insured, carrier, NAIC, policy numbers, limits, effective dates, and compliance fields.
• Compare COI data to contract language, noting special conditions (e.g., per-project aggregate, completed operations AI, PNC wording).
• Email vendor or broker for endorsements (CG 20 10, CG 20 37, CG 20 01, CG 24 04, per-project aggregate, and equivalents); wait and re-follow-up.
• Review all attachments for alignment with contractual risk transfer requirements; reconcile discrepancies.
• Set calendar reminders for renewal; email reminders as expirations approach; repeat the cycle.

Under time pressure, teams often sample rather than fully audit, accept COI checkboxes at face value, or let renewals slip. Across a large vendor base, it’s easy to miss that a COI names the wrong entity, a policy renewed with different limits, an additional insured endorsement applies only to ongoing ops, or a waiver of subrogation is limited by state. The result is leakage: when coverage is denied or insufficient, the named insured absorbs the loss, which can translate to higher loss ratios, litigation, or costly indemnification battles.

What a Certificate of Insurance Compliance Tool Must Do Now

If you’re evaluating a certificate of insurance compliance tool, ensure it handles far more than checkbox verification on ACORD forms. It must read like a Risk Transfer Specialist, reason across unstructured documents, and tie findings back to the exact page and clause. Modern COI compliance requires:

• Document breadth: Process ACORD 25/28/27, policy declarations, endorsements, contract agreements, and vendor onboarding documents in a single workflow.
• Contract-aware validation: Compare extracted coverage details and endorsement language to project- or property-specific contract requirements.
• Endorsement intelligence: Verify the presence and applicability of AI (ongoing/completed ops), PNC, waiver of subrogation, and per-project aggregate—beyond COI checkboxes.
• Entity resolution: Flag mismatches between vendor legal name, DBA, and the insured on the certificate and endorsements.
• Renewal & lapse control: Track expiration by policy line and proactively alert before lapses occur.
• Defensible audit trail: Page-level citations that link directly to the clause, endorsement, and date used to make each determination.
• Exception automation: Auto-generate and send deficiency notices to vendors/brokers with exact missing documents or clauses.
• Scale: Read thousands of pages in minutes and operate across seasonal surges without adding headcount.

Why is this so hard to build? As Nomad Data explains in Beyond Extraction: Why Document Scraping Isn’t Just Web Scraping for PDFs, true automation isn’t just parsing fields; it’s inferring coverage posture from scattered, nuanced language and unwritten rules—the same ones your senior Risk Transfer Specialists apply every day.

How Doc Chat Uses AI to Audit Certificates of Insurance

Doc Chat is an AI-powered suite of agents that reads your COIs, endorsements, and contracts end-to-end and applies your risk transfer playbooks. As an AI audit certificates of insurance solution, Doc Chat:

Ingests and organizes at portfolio scale. Drag-and-drop entire vendor folders or integrate with your intake systems. Doc Chat handles ACORD 25, ACORD 28/27, policy dec pages, ISO and carrier-specific endorsements, contract agreements, and vendor onboarding packets—even when formats differ by broker, market, or region.

Understands your contractual requirements. During onboarding, Nomad Data codifies your contract templates and recurring clauses—per-project aggregate, AI for ongoing/completed ops, PNC wording, waiver of subrogation across GL/Auto/WC, specific limit thresholds by trade, and any property requirements for building operations—so the system evaluates each vendor’s documents against your exact standards.

Validates endorsements rather than COI checkboxes. Doc Chat confirms whether the appropriate AI endorsements (e.g., CG 20 10 and CG 20 37 or equivalent), primary and non-contributory wording (e.g., CG 20 01 or carrier equivalent), per-project aggregate (e.g., CG 25 03), and waiver of transfer of rights (e.g., CG 24 04 or property-equivalent wording) are present and applicable to the named insured and project/property.

Detects mismatches, lapses, and anomalies. It flags incorrect insured names, non-matching entity variants, altered or low-resolution certificates, and effective/expiration dates that create coverage gaps. It also spots renewed policies that silently reduced limits or dropped endorsements—classic drivers of leakage.

Creates a defensible, page-linked audit trail. Every finding links to the exact page and clause. Oversight, legal, and audit can click back to source in seconds—an approach proven in complex claims settings, as profiled in Great American Insurance Group Accelerates Complex Claims with AI.

Answers questions in real time. Ask: “Which vendors lack completed-ops AI for Building A?”, “Show all GL policies expiring in 30 days,” or “List contracts requiring per-project aggregates and whether the endorsement is present.” Doc Chat returns precise answers instantly, even across thousands of files, with citations you can verify.

Automates exception outreach. Doc Chat drafts deficiency notices that reference the specific missing endorsement or non-compliant limit, attaches a list of acceptable forms, and can route via your vendor portals or email for rapid resolution.

Integrates cleanly. Use Doc Chat stand-alone, or integrate via API into your procurement, vendor management, claims, and AP systems. Its ability to standardize output is one reason clients see immediate ROI, as described in AI’s Untapped Goldmine: Automating Data Entry.

“Find Lapsed COI Coverage at Scale” With Predictive Renewal Controls

Lapses are the most common, costly form of COI non-compliance. Doc Chat was built to find lapsed COI coverage at scale and stop it from happening in the first place. It continuously monitors policy expiration dates across GL, Auto, Umbrella/Excess, WC, and Property lines, then:

• Prioritizes vendors by risk criticality (trade, exposure, location, project phase, property type).
• Triggers staged reminders to vendors and brokers 60/30/15/7 days in advance with line-of-business specificity.
• Automatically quarantines vendors from new work orders if critical lines lapse without compliant updates, based on your rules.
• Summarizes renewal changes—limits, carriers, endorsements—so you see what changed from year to year, not just that a renewal arrived.

This preventive approach converts reactive clean-up into proactive risk control. Instead of discovering a lapse during a claim, you prevent the lapse entirely.

Business Impact for the Risk Transfer Specialist

For teams responsible for risk transfer across General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners, Doc Chat shifts the center of gravity from manual, repetitive review to strategic oversight and resolution. The outcomes are tangible:

• Time savings: Reviews that consume 20–45 minutes per vendor (longer when endorsements are included) shrink to seconds. Portfolio audits that took weeks compress into the same afternoon.
• Cost reduction: Lower loss-adjustment expenses and fewer outside legal/review costs by catching gaps before incidents. Reduced overtime and temporary staffing during peak onboarding and renewal seasons.
• Accuracy and consistency: Machines never fatigue at page 1,500. Doc Chat reads every page with equal attention and applies the same rules to every vendor, every time—reducing leakage and dispute risk.
• Defensibility: Page-linked citations and standardized determinations make audits, regulator queries, and litigation support faster and stronger.
• Talent leverage: Risk Transfer Specialists shift from document scraping to judgment and negotiation, improving morale and retention.

These benefits mirror what Nomad Data clients see in adjacent workflows—from medical file review to complex claims triage—outlined in Reimagining Claims Processing Through AI Transformation and The End of Medical File Review Bottlenecks. The engine that reads 15,000 pages of medical records in minutes is the same engine that can read your COIs, endorsements, and contracts with relentless consistency.

The Nuances Doc Chat Catches That Humans Often Miss

Doc Chat doesn’t just check boxes; it interprets language in context, which is crucial for both construction and property portfolios:

Completed operations AI. Many endorsements grant AI status only for ongoing operations. Doc Chat identifies whether completed ops are included and whether the term applies for the required period post-completion. This matters for trades like roofing, HVAC, and plumbing, where loss manifests months later.

Per-project and per-location aggregates. In construction, an aggregate shared across multiple projects can dilute protection; for real estate portfolios, per-location aggregates can be crucial. Doc Chat confirms presence and applicability.

Primary & non-contributory wording. It verifies that coverage applies on a primary basis without contribution from the owner/association’s policies, across GL and Auto where required.

Waivers of subrogation across lines. Especially relevant for property managers and HOAs with on-site vendors, Doc Chat confirms waivers on GL, Auto, and often WC, not just one line.

Entity name alignment. The system flags when the insured name varies from contract signatory (e.g., a DBA or subsidiary signed the contract, but the parent is insured), triggering your escalation rules.

Policy changes at renewal. Doc Chat compares prior-year submissions to current-year policies, detecting subtle limit or wording changes (e.g., an exclusion added, a limit lowered, or an endorsement dropped) that might otherwise slip by busy teams.

Potentially falsified certificates. It detects inconsistencies in fonts, carrier addresses, or NAIC numbers and can route suspected documents for secondary verification—critical in high-volume vendor environments.

How the Process Is Handled Manually vs. With Doc Chat

Manual: People read COIs and endorsements line by line, copy data into spreadsheets, compare against contracts, request missing items, set calendar reminders, and follow up repeatedly. During surges—project mobilization, seasonal maintenance cycles, or mass renewals—backlogs are common and exceptions slip.

With Doc Chat: The system ingests full vendor packets in their natural formats; extracts limits, dates, entities, carriers, NAICs; validates endorsements against contract clauses; and outputs a structured, project- or property-specific compliance status with page-level citations. It then automates vendor outreach with precise requests (“Please provide a CG 20 37 endorsement for completed operations coverage naming [Owner/Association] as Additional Insured”), tracks responses, and updates status automatically. Meanwhile, Risk Transfer Specialists focus on escalations, negotiations, and governance.

Why Nomad Data Is the Best Partner for COI Automation

Nomad Data brings unique strengths that matter specifically for Risk Transfer Specialists:

Volume and speed: Doc Chat ingests claim files and document sets at enterprise scale—thousands of pages per minute—so your COI backlog disappears. When you need to audit an entire vendor base quickly, the platform delivers.

Complexity and precision: As discussed in Beyond Extraction, our approach isn’t just about extracting fields; it’s about inferring coverage sufficiency from dense, inconsistent endorsements and policy language. That’s exactly what COI compliance demands.

The Nomad Process (white glove): We interview your Risk Transfer Specialists, capture your unwritten rules, and encode your contract templates and exceptions into Doc Chat. The result is a fit-to-purpose solution that mirrors how your best people work. We deliver this with white-glove service and an implementation measured in 1–2 weeks, not quarters.

Real-time Q&A with source citations: Ask Doc Chat questions in plain English and get instantaneous answers with links back to the original endorsements, dec pages, or contract clauses. That transparency builds trust across risk, legal, and procurement stakeholders.

Security and compliance: Nomad Data maintains SOC 2 Type 2 controls and offers deployment patterns that align with your data governance. As we explain in AI’s Untapped Goldmine, enterprise-grade security and auditability are non-negotiable—and standard in how we operate.

Implementation Blueprint: From Zero to Live in 1–2 Weeks

Your path to an automated COI compliance program is straightforward.

1. Discovery and playbook capture (Days 1–3): We document your LOB-specific requirements for General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners. We review your contract templates, recurring clauses, acceptable endorsement lists, and exception rules by trade or property type.
2. Document onboarding (Days 2–5): You drag-and-drop sample COIs, endorsements, and contracts for 50–200 vendors—or we connect to your vendor portal or DMS. Doc Chat begins processing immediately.
3. Preset and output design (Days 3–6): We tailor your compliance report format: fields, scoring, exception taxonomy, and vendor outreach templates. We enable dashboards for “expiring soon,” “critical missing items,” and “vendors blocked from new work.”
4. Pilot and calibration (Days 5–10): Your Risk Transfer Specialists validate results on known cases, compare Doc Chat outputs against historical decisions, and fine-tune exceptions. This is where trust is established—fast.
5. Go-live and integration (Week 2): Optional API integration into procurement, AP, or vendor systems. Doc Chat begins full-scale audits and automated exception handling.

Because Doc Chat works out of the box and learns your playbook quickly, you start seeing measurable time savings and compliance uplift in the first week of use.

Use Cases Across General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners

Owners, Developers, and GCs (Construction): Validate subcontractor COIs and endorsements for major builds and renovations. Ensure AI for ongoing and completed ops, PNC, waivers, and per-project aggregates are in force before mobilization and through closeout. Prevent vendor work if critical lines are lapsed or endorsements are missing.

Property Managers, HOAs, and REITs (Property & Homeowners): Standardize requirements across portfolios, from high-rise towers to garden communities. Confirm GL, Auto, Umbrella/Excess, WC, and property-related requirements for all vendors. Track renewals and pinpoint coverage shifts during annual updates. Reduce risk of premises liability claims reverting to the owner or association.

Lenders and Owners’ Reps: For projects with lender-imposed insurance requirements, Doc Chat verifies evidence of property coverage (ACORD 28/27 equivalents), mortgagee clauses, or any stipulated waivers—cross-referencing contract and lender language to ensure everything aligns before funds are disbursed.

Frequently Asked Questions From Risk Transfer Specialists

How is Doc Chat different from a basic COI tracker? Trackers monitor dates and store documents. Doc Chat reads endorsements and contracts, compares them, and produces a defensible determination with citations. It’s a certificate of insurance compliance tool that thinks like your best reviewer and works at machine speed.

Can Doc Chat spot falsified or altered certificates? Yes. It flags inconsistencies in formatting, carrier details, and suspicious metadata. It routes suspected documents for secondary verification and maintains an audit trail.

Will it work with my existing vendor portal or ERP? Yes. Doc Chat can run stand-alone or integrate via API. Many clients start with drag-and-drop and integrate in week two.

How do you ensure our unique rules are followed? We encode your playbook, contract templates, and exceptions. Doc Chat follows your rules consistently and updates easily if your standards change.

How fast can we get value? Most teams see value within days. A full pilot often completes in 1–2 weeks with live portfolio audits and automated renewal reminders running by the end of week two.

Governance, Audit, and Defensibility

COI decisions must hold up under internal audit, regulator questions, or litigation. Doc Chat’s page-linked citations let Risk Transfer Specialists, counsel, or executives verify conclusions in seconds. That transparency is the same standard we bring to complex claims, where page-level explainability has driven adoption across carriers, as highlighted in GAIG’s experience. With SOC 2 Type 2 controls and enterprise-grade data governance, Doc Chat is designed for the scrutiny COI compliance demands.

Quantifying the Uplift: From Leakage Reduction to Better Vendor Relationships

While hard-dollar savings vary by portfolio, clients typically report:

Cycle time compression: Portfolio audits in hours instead of weeks; review time per vendor shrinking from 20–45 minutes to under one minute in many cases.

Leakage reduction: Fewer uncovered or underinsured incidents because coverage gaps are caught pre-incident—especially missing completed ops AI, absent PNC wording, or silent exclusionary changes at renewal.

Higher compliance rates: Proactive reminders and precise deficiency notices improve vendor responsiveness and shorten the time to compliance.

Better vendor relationships: Clear, specific requests (with cited clauses) replace vague “please fix” emails. Vendors know exactly what to provide, reducing friction and rework.

Talent redeployment: Risk Transfer Specialists spend more time on strategy, dispute resolution, and education—and less on manual data entry—mirroring the workforce transformation described in AI for Insurance: Real-World AI Use Cases Driving Transformation.

From Pain Point to Advantage: Turning COI Management Into a Strategic Capability

Most organizations treat COI compliance as a necessary burden. With Doc Chat, Risk Transfer Specialists turn that burden into a competitive differentiator. Owners and property managers with stronger vendor compliance have fewer uncovered losses, cleaner project closeouts, and better negotiating leverage when disputes arise. They also enjoy a consistent standard of care regardless of staff turnover, because expertise is embedded in the system, not just in individual heads—the exact standardization outcome highlighted in Nomad Data’s approach to institutionalizing expertise.

Ready to See It on Your Portfolio?

If your team is searching for an AI audit certificates of insurance solution that can find lapsed COI coverage at scale and operate as your day-to-day certificate of insurance compliance tool, it’s time to see Doc Chat in action. Upload a handful of vendor files—or a thousand. Ask the questions you already ask today. Then click the citations and verify for yourself. The speed, accuracy, and defensibility speak for themselves.

Learn more about Doc Chat for Insurance at Nomad Data. In 1–2 weeks, your COI compliance program can move from backlog and risk to clarity and control.