Automated Certificate of Insurance Audits for General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners — What Contractual Risk Managers Need Now

Contractual Risk Managers live at the intersection of risk transfer, vendor oversight, and operational speed. Whether you support a General Liability & Construction program with hundreds of subcontractors or a Property & Homeowners portfolio with rotating vendors across buildings and HOAs, one task never scales easily: continuously verifying Certificates of Insurance (COIs) against contractual requirements. The challenge compounds when thousands of ACORD 25 forms, endorsements, and contract agreements arrive by email, portals, and shared drives—all in different formats, with different terms, and at different times.

This is exactly where Doc Chat by Nomad Data changes the game. Doc Chat is a suite of purpose-built, AI-powered agents designed to ingest, read, extract, and cross-check every page of your certificate packets, contracts, vendor onboarding documents, and endorsements. In minutes, it flags non-compliant vendors, finds lapsed or expiring coverage, and produces an auditable compliance matrix you can send to procurement, legal, and operations. If you have been searching for an AI audit certificates of insurance solution that actually understands the nuances of risk transfer in General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners, you’ve found it.

The Nuance: Why COI Compliance Is Harder Than It Looks in Construction and Property

COIs are not policies. The standard ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance explicitly disclaims that it confers rights. That puts the Contractual Risk Manager in a bind—teams must verify that the actual coverage and endorsements match what’s promised in the contract, not just what a checkbox suggests. In General Liability & Construction, risk transfer is typically detailed in master service agreements, subcontracts, and purchase orders. In Property & Homeowners, property managers and HOA boards rely on COIs to keep contractors and vendors compliant before they step on site. In both worlds, the nuance is buried in the language.

Consider the standard requirements you see every day:

Additional insured status for ongoing and completed operations (e.g., CG 20 10 and CG 20 37 endorsement series, or CG 20 38 for owners, lessees, or contractors).
Primary and non-contributory wording for additional insureds.
Waiver of subrogation endorsements on GL, WC, and Auto where required.
Per-project aggregate limits for construction projects.
Hired & Non-Owned Auto coverage when vendors use personal vehicles.
Umbrella/excess limits stacking appropriately with GL, Auto, and Employers’ Liability.
Evidence of property coverages (e.g., ACORD 28 Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance, ACORD 27 Evidence of Property Insurance for personal/HOA contexts).

COIs often list limits and check a box for Additional Insured, but they rarely include the full endorsement language or the primary and non-contributory clause you actually require. Endorsements like CG 24 04 (Waiver of Transfer of Rights of Recovery Against Others To Us) are the difference between theoretical and real risk transfer. In Property & Homeowners contexts—think rooftop work, window washing, electrical, landscaping, snow removal—ensuring Workers’ Compensation and Employers’ Liability are in place is essential. One lapse or missing endorsement can push loss back to the named insured, eroding the very protection the contract sought to create.

Manual Reality Today: Email Chasing, Spreadsheets, and Risk Blind Spots

Most Contractual Risk Managers still run a largely manual process—especially when certificate of insurance compliance tool attempts have stalled due to rigid templates or limited endorsement parsing. The typical workflow looks like this:

Collect COIs and vendor onboarding documents by email, portal uploads, or shared drives.
Open each ACORD 25, scan carrier names, policy numbers, limits, and effective dates.
Cross-check against a contract’s insurance exhibit line by line, often in a spreadsheet tracker.
Request missing endorsements (e.g., CG 20 10 04 13, CG 20 37 04 13, primary & non-contributory), then wait for a new submission.
Spot-check Umbrella, Auto (including Hired & Non-Owned), and WC; chase down waiver of subrogation language.
Record expiration dates and set calendar reminders hoping to avoid lapsed coverage.

Even high-performing teams struggle when volume spikes—new project mobilizations, seasonal work across a property portfolio, or an influx of new vendors. It’s simply not feasible to re-read every updated certificate or endorsement slowly and perfectly. Important gaps slip through:

COIs renewed without the required endorsement pages attached.
Umbrella policies that exclude the additional insured obligations granted on the primary GL.
WC coverage present but no waiver of subrogation, despite contract language requiring it.
Auto Liability present, but Hired & Non-Owned Auto not included, even though the vendor relies on employee vehicles.
Property evidence provided (ACORD 28/ACORD 27) but no confirmation of required special causes of loss or valuation terms in multi-tenant situations.
Name mismatches between vendor legal entity on the contract and the insured on the COI.

Multiply those realities across thousands of documents and dozens of projects or properties. Without automation, the manual approach takes too long, costs too much, and leaves blind spots.

What a Contractual Risk Manager Should Verify on Every COI

In both General Liability & Construction and Property & Homeowners, consistent verification is the backbone of risk transfer. A non-exhaustive checklist includes:

Policy terms: effective/expiration dates, retro dates (claims-made), cancellation notice requirements, and carrier AM Best ratings if required by contract.
Limits: per occurrence and aggregate, per-project aggregate for construction, umbrellas stacking as required.
Additional insured: endorsement presence and scope (ongoing vs completed ops), form versions (e.g., CG 20 10, CG 20 37, CG 20 38), and scheduling method (blanket vs specific).
Primary & non-contributory: confirmation that AI coverage applies on a primary basis without contribution from the owner/GC’s program.
Waiver of subrogation: granted on GL, WC, Auto as applicable.
Auto: symbol coverage alignment; Hired & Non-Owned Auto where required.
WC/EL: state compliance, Employers’ Liability limits, and waiver endorsements.
Property evidence: where applicable, correct ACORD form (e.g., ACORD 28, ACORD 27) and terms aligned to the contract.
Entity names: insured name matches the contracting entity; additional insured schedule names align with contract parties and site.

The list is long—and that’s why Contractual Risk Managers need an AI engine that reliably does the reading, extracting, cross-referencing, and exception flagging at scale.

How Doc Chat Automates COI Compliance at Scale

Doc Chat by Nomad Data is built for high-volume, high-variance insurance paperwork. It ingests entire folders of Certificates of Insurance, contract agreements, and vendor onboarding documents—including ACORD 25, ACORD 28, ACORD 27, endorsements, email cover letters, and insurance exhibits—and returns a precise, auditable compliance view. In short, it is the certificate of insurance compliance tool that Contractual Risk Managers have been asking for.

Core capabilities include:

AI audit certificates of insurance: Read and extract policy numbers, limits, carriers, effective dates, cancellation language, and special conditions—across thousands of varying forms.
Endorsement detection: Identify presence and specifics of CG 20 10, CG 20 37, CG 20 38, CG 24 04 (waiver), primary & non-contributory wording, and per-project aggregate evidence.
Contract cross-check: Compare extracted coverage to each contract’s insurance exhibit requirements and flag exceptions.
Entity verification: Check that insured names match vendor legal entities and that additional insureds correspond to owners/GCs/HOAs/property managers.
Auto & WC specifics: Confirm presence of Hired & Non-Owned Auto coverage; verify WC/EL limits and waiver endorsements.
Property evidence alignment: Where required, verify ACORD 28/27 terms align with lease or HOA agreement specifications.
Renewal and lapse monitoring: Extract expiration dates, set automated reminders, and find lapsed COI coverage at scale—before someone steps on site.
Real-time Q&A: Ask questions like “List all vendors with expiring GL within 30 days,” “Which subs are missing completed ops?” or “Which HOAs lack WC waivers?” Doc Chat answers instantly with page-level citations.

Doc Chat is not a generic summarizer. It is trained on your playbooks, your contracts, and your standards—the Nomad process that creates a tailored solution to your risk transfer reality. You get structured outputs that slot right into procurement workflows and property management systems—without adding headcount.

For a deeper look at how Doc Chat accelerates complex document review with transparent citations, see Reimagining Insurance Claims Management: GAIG Accelerates Complex Claims with AI. The same capabilities—instant answers with page-level links—power compliance in COI workflows.

From Contracts to COIs: Closing the Loop on Risk Transfer

Compliance doesn’t start with a certificate; it starts with the contract. Doc Chat reads your master service agreements, subcontracts, HOA agreements, vendor onboarding packets, and insurance exhibits to create a digital checklist for each vendor or project. When a COI packet arrives, Doc Chat compares what’s present to what’s required:

Are Additional Insured endorsements present for the required parties?
Is primary & non-contributory wording confirmed?
Is the per-project aggregate satisfied for construction?
Does the Umbrella follow form for AI and waiver obligations?
Is HNOA present where vendors rely on personal vehicles?
Do WC and Employers’ Liability match the limits and include waiver of subrogation?
Are ACORD 28 or ACORD 27 aligned to property-related requirements?

The result is a compliance matrix with green checks and red exceptions, plus the exact page references. Operations get clarity, legal gets defensibility, and procurement gets speed.

Proactive Monitoring: How to Find Lapsed COI Coverage at Scale

Even perfect one-time verification isn’t enough. Coverage changes, renewals lapse, endorsements fall off renewals, and entities change names. Doc Chat continuously scans incoming documents, extracts expiration dates across GL, Auto, WC, and Umbrella, and monitors for gaps. Alerts fire when:

Expiry is within a configurable window (e.g., 30/60 days).
A renewal COI arrives without previously required endorsements (e.g., waivers or AIs drop off).
Umbrella no longer includes AI obligations referenced by GL.
Entity names change or no longer match contract parties.

That means your team can truly find lapsed COI coverage at scale—and fix it before exposure meets loss.

Business Impact: Time, Cost, and Accuracy for Contractual Risk Managers

Doc Chat is built to convert days of manual COI review into minutes of automated verification. In complex document environments, Nomad clients have seen order-of-magnitude improvements in handling time and accuracy, with page-level explainability that builds organizational trust. As highlighted in The End of Medical File Review Bottlenecks, Doc Chat processes hundreds of thousands of pages per minute and never tires—page 1,500 gets the same attention as page 1.

Beyond speed, the economics are compelling. According to AI’s Untapped Goldmine: Automating Data Entry, intelligent document processing routinely delivers first-year ROI in the 30–200% range, with some studies citing 240%+ when applied at scale. While COI compliance differs from pure data entry, the same principle applies: eliminate repetitive reading and manual tracking, and you unlock capacity, reduce leakage, and improve control.

Typical improvements Contractual Risk Managers can expect:

Time savings: 70–90% reduction in COI review and tracking time per vendor.
Cost reduction: Lower loss-adjustment and administrative expense by removing repetitive manual touchpoints.
Accuracy: Fewer missed endorsements, cleaner entity matching, and stronger defense during disputes.
Scalability: Handle seasonal spikes or project mobilizations without overtime or temp staffing.

All of this translates to fewer unpleasant surprises when a claim arises—because the risk transfer was verified properly, in advance, and continuously.

Why Nomad Data: Purpose-Built, Battle-Tested, and Fast to Implement

Doc Chat by Nomad Data is more than software—it’s a partnership. Here’s why Contractual Risk Managers choose Nomad for COI compliance:

Volume without headcount: Ingest entire vendor folders and project files, including massive email threads and multi-document packages, with reviews completed in minutes.
Complexity handled: Doc Chat finds exclusions, endorsements, and trigger language hidden in dense, inconsistent documents—exactly where mistakes often occur.
The Nomad Process: We train Doc Chat on your playbooks, your contract templates, and your compliance standards, delivering a personalized solution that matches your workflows.
Real-time Q&A with citations: Ask a question and get instant answers tied to the source page for audit readiness.
Thorough & complete: Every reference to coverage, liability, endorsements, and conditions is surfaced—closing the loopholes that cause leakage.
Security & trust: Nomad maintains SOC 2 Type 2 controls and provides transparent audit trails for compliance and legal review.
White glove onboarding: Implementation typically completes in 1–2 weeks, including preset creation, output format design, and workflow integration.

To understand how transparent citations build trust and accelerate adoption among adjusters and analysts, review our customer story: Great American Insurance Group Accelerates Complex Claims with AI. The same page-level explainability that won over claims teams now powers COI audits for Contractual Risk Managers.

Designed for Your World: Use Cases Across GL & Construction and Property & Homeowners

Doc Chat delivers immediate value wherever third-party risk transfer relies on certificates and endorsements:

General contractors and construction managers: Automate sub compliance for ongoing/completed ops, per-project aggregates, umbrella follow-form, and HNOA—across all tiers.
Owners/developers: Verify that GCs and key subs deliver contract-conforming COIs and endorsements prior to mobilization and at each renewal.
Property managers and REITs: Track thousands of vendors (maintenance, HVAC, roofing, snow removal) across portfolios; alert on expirations and endorsement drop-offs.
HOA/condo boards: Ensure contractors on common elements carry appropriate GL, WC, and Auto with AI, primary & non-contributory, and waivers.
Facility services and franchisors: Centralize vendor COI oversight nationally; standardize risk transfer across locations.

Whether you manage hundreds of subcontracts on a hospital expansion or dozens of vendors across a multifamily portfolio, Doc Chat scales your team’s capability—without scaling your headcount.

Beyond Extraction: Why Reading COIs Is Not Enough

Most "COI tools" stop at field extraction. But risk transfer lives in what’s not written clearly: the implications of an endorsement, the interaction between primary and umbrella, and the difference between a checked box and an enforceable clause. As we detail in Beyond Extraction: Why Document Scraping Isn’t Just Web Scraping for PDFs, enterprise-grade document intelligence must infer meaning, not just scrape fields. Doc Chat captures your unwritten rules—how your best Contractual Risk Managers reason through a packet—and replicates that judgment consistently and at speed.

Security, Explainability, and Audit-Readiness

COI audits touch sensitive insurance and vendor data. Nomad’s enterprise controls, page-level citations, and transparent decisioning make it easy for compliance, legal, and audit teams to validate outputs. In our work with carriers and complex claims organizations, we’ve found that visibility into the source page is critical to building trust and accelerating adoption. That same principle is foundational in Doc Chat’s COI workflows—every exception is linked back to the exact page and paragraph where it was detected.

For a broader view of how explainability and defensibility improve team performance and oversight, see Reimagining Claims Processing Through AI Transformation.

Integrations and Workflow Fit

Doc Chat meets you where you are. Start with simple drag-and-drop uploads and CSV exports to your spreadsheet trackers. As adoption grows, Nomad integrates to intake portals, AP/procurement systems, VMS, construction management platforms, and property management software via modern APIs. Outputs include:

A vendor-level or project-level compliance matrix with pass/fail logic and notes.
A renewal calendar across GL, Auto, WC, Umbrella, and Property evidence.
Exception reports by endorsement type (missing AI, missing waiver, missing HNOA) and by location or project.
Action queues for outreach, re-requests, and blocking site access until compliant.

Because Doc Chat is tailored to your standards, it becomes an extension of your team rather than another system to wrestle with. Implementation is measured in 1–2 weeks, not quarters.

From Backlog to Advantage: The Cultural Shift for Risk Teams

Contractual Risk Managers aren’t hired to retype policy numbers from ACORD forms; they’re hired to reduce loss potential through rigorous, consistent risk transfer. Doc Chat frees your experts to focus on exceptions, strategy, and education. Teams that previously spent hours chasing endorsements can spend minutes confirming exceptions and advising operations. As highlighted in AI for Insurance: Real-World AI Use Cases Driving Transformation, the biggest gains come when AI standardizes processes and institutionalizes expertise so every desk performs like your best desk.

Answers to Common Questions from Contractual Risk Managers

Does Doc Chat read and interpret endorsements, or only COI checkboxes?
Doc Chat extracts and interprets endorsement language when provided—e.g., CG 20 10/CG 20 37/CG 20 38, primary & non-contributory, waiver of subrogation, per-project aggregates—and flags when the COI lacks the underlying endorsement proof your contract requires.

What happens when vendors send partial or inconsistent packets?
Doc Chat identifies missing documents and specific missing elements (e.g., “Umbrella follows form confirmation missing,” “WC waiver endorsement missing”), creating a precise re-request list you can send back to brokers or vendors.

Can Doc Chat help validate carrier quality or ratings?
Many contracts require certain AM Best ratings. Doc Chat can be configured to extract carrier names and policy numbers and, where desired, integrate external data sources to check carrier ratings—enabling a single compliance view. See our perspective on connecting AI to third-party data in AI’s Untapped Goldmine.

We use an OCIP/CCIP—can Doc Chat still help?
Yes. Doc Chat can separate trades covered by the wrap from those not covered and ensure non-covered parties submit compliant COIs, endorsements, and waivers per the contract.

How does Doc Chat handle special HOA/property requirements?
Doc Chat reads HOA bylaws or management agreements, builds the checklist (e.g., GL, WC, AI for the association, waiver, HNOA for contractors who drive between properties), and flags exceptions vendor by vendor, building by building.

Implementation: White Glove Service, 1–2 Weeks to Value

Getting started is straightforward:

Discovery: Nomad captures your contract templates, insurance exhibits, and current COI review rules.
Preset design: We codify your standards into Doc Chat presets (e.g., construction vs. property vendor, HOA vs. commercial site).
Pilot: Drag and drop historical packets; validate outputs with your team. Tune exceptions and reports.
Rollout: Enable uploads via email or portal; configure alerts and renewal calendars; integrate to your systems as needed.

Throughout, you’ll work with a dedicated Nomad team. Doc Chat is not one-size-fits-all—it’s your playbook, automated. Because the platform is built for insurance documents from the ground up, the path from pilot to production is measured in 1–2 weeks, not long IT projects.

Your Next Step

If you’ve been evaluating a certificate of insurance compliance tool or searching for ways to AI audit certificates of insurance and find lapsed COI coverage at scale, it’s time to see Doc Chat in action. The fastest wins come from automating what your team does repeatedly: reading COIs and endorsements, cross-checking contracts, and tracking renewals. Every day you wait, your exposure window stays open.

Explore Doc Chat for Insurance and discover how leading insurers and risk teams are shrinking cycle times, standardizing compliance, and protecting their named insureds with confidence.