Certificate of insurance: request to issued COI

Interviewer: Before we dive in — quick heads up, I'm recording this, and I've also got Sapeum running alongside us. It'll map out the process flow live as we talk, so you'll actually see the steps build on screen as you describe them. That work for you?

Specialist: Yeah, totally. Honestly, seeing it drawn out might keep me from skipping things.

Interviewer: Great. So keep it simple — walk me through what happens when a certificate of insurance request comes in.

Specialist: Sure. So most requests come in by email — a client writes in, "I need a cert for this new job." I open it and figure out who the client is and what they actually need. The big thing is the certificate holder — whoever's requiring the cert, like the general contractor — their exact name and address. And whether they need special language: additional insured, waiver of subrogation, that kind of thing. Because if I get that wrong, the holder rejects the cert and we start over.

Interviewer: Okay, you've got the request. Then what?

Specialist: Then I pull up the client's policies in our management system — AMS360. I check the general liability, the auto, the workers' comp, confirm everything's active and the limits match what their contract requires.

Interviewer: And if they need that additional-insured language?

Specialist: That's the fork. If they just need proof of coverage, easy — I issue it. But if they need additional insured or waiver of subrogation, I have to check whether the policy actually carries that endorsement. If it does, fine. If it doesn't, I request the endorsement from the carrier first, and that can take days, so the cert waits on it.

Interviewer: Then you generate the certificate itself?

Specialist: Right. I generate the ACORD form out of AMS360, fill in the holder, attach any endorsement language, and give it a once-over against the request — holder spelled right, limits right. Then I email it to the requester, save a copy to the client file, and log that it went out.

Interviewer: Let me push on one thing — where does the time actually go? What's most ripe for automation?

Specialist: Honestly, the intake and the pulling. Ninety percent of these are routine — same client, same holder, renewal job. Me reading the email, figuring out which policies apply, typing in the holder — a system could read the request, match it to the policies, and pre-fill the form. I'd just verify and send. That alone would save most of my morning.

Interviewer: That's useful. Actually — go back a second. You said requests mostly come in by email. Roughly what's the split?

Specialist: Yeah, so — let me correct that, I was thinking of last year. Since we turned the portal on, it's more like sixty-forty, portal to email now. I misspoke earlier; more come through the portal than I made it sound.

Interviewer: Good to know. And earlier you listed saving the copy and logging it as two separate steps —

Specialist: Right, let me fix that one too — it's actually one step. When I save it to the client file, the system auto-logs the activity. I conflated them; there's no separate logging step.

Interviewer: Perfect, that's exactly the kind of thing we want to catch. Okay — let me switch gears to future state. Give me one second, I'm going to spin up a future-state view in Sapeum so we can sketch it... okay, it's generating that now... alright, it's up. So, best case, fully built out — what does this look like?

Specialist: Honestly, a lot of this front-end work just goes away. The whole intake dance — me reading the email, working out who the client is, pulling each policy up, eyeballing the limits, typing the holder in by hand — most of that should disappear. If we moved clients onto a structured intake portal, something like Vertafore's InsurLink, the request would land already tied to the right account. And if we turned on the certificate-automation piece — Certificate Hero — it could pull the matching policies and pre-fill the ACORD straight from the policy data we already keep in AMS360. So instead of me building the cert from scratch, a finished draft should just be sitting there waiting on me.

Interviewer: And the endorsements — the additional-insured check?

Specialist: Yeah, that manual hunt goes away too. Right now I'm opening each policy to see whether the additional-insured endorsement is actually on it. But that data already lives in AMS360 — so if the automation reads it, it should just tell me up front whether we can grant it, instead of me digging. And when the endorsement isn't there, a tool like that already knows the carrier and the policy, so it could draft the request to them on its own. What comes in is more of a quick flag-and-confirm than a hunt.

Interviewer: And your role in that world?

Specialist: What's left for me is really the judgment part. The clean, routine certs come through pre-filled, and I just give them a quick look and approve. What goes away is all the manual assembly and typing; what comes in is me spending my time on the messy ones — odd holder wording, a contract requirement we've never seen, a coverage gap I need to flag to the producer. Honestly, that's the part of the job I'd rather be spending my time on anyway.

Interviewer: That's a great place to land. Thanks.

Specialist: Yeah — seeing it build on screen made the redundant steps really obvious. Useful.