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Background
Commercial Insurance Consultants (CIC) practices a multifaceted, risk management process supporting clients to make informed and strategic insurance buying decisions. They collaborate with clients to understand their business needs, identify risk, and design programs to maximize coverages and manage costs. Since 1977, their services have been 100% fee-based. They don’t sell insurance, but they definitely know insurance. Rachel Deeley is one of 12 employees at CIC whose roles range from account servicing and management to account support, specialty consultants (i.e. construction) and others.
Rachael Deeley is the Strategic Marketing Manager at Commercial Insurance Consultants (CIC). With backgrounds in both commercial insurance and graphic arts, Rachel’s unique combination of professions equips her to help her company and its clients with concise communication, industry and interrelated aesthetics.
Prior to joining the CIC team in 2015, Rachael was a Commercial Lines Account Manager at First Niagara Risk Management (FNRM). She specialized in social service and property management accounts and lead the effort to streamline operational procedures within the Commercial Lines Department.
CIC specializes in nearly every industry as third party compliance and monitoring is an often-overlooked area that many industries need support in. Even for companies with internal insurance teams, tenured experience and continuing education is often deficient. Therefore, nuances of risk management, a complex and crucial dimension of doing business, are frequently left to interpretation and assumption. CIC has seen the most need with contractors, real estate developers, owners, property managers and lenders.
CIC specializes in nearly every industry as third party compliance and monitoring is an often-overlooked area that many industries need support in.
The Manual COI Tracking & Compliance Method
CIC began their search for a technology solution to ease the pain of insurance compliance and monitoring for their clients. “We wanted to offer a unique, individualized service to our clients that would benefit from such technology combined with CIC’s insurance experience,” added Rachel.
Previously CIC used a combination of Excel Spreadsheets, Outlook Email and Calendar reminders to track certificates of insurance for their clients. The process was manual and cumbersome, leaving a large margin for errors and misinterpretation, and adding hours of frustrating phone calls and emails to chase down certificates.
CIC knew they needed a better system because the consequences are so critical if third party/vendor insurance is non-compliant. For businesses to be protected completely, third party insurance documentation must be verified with all-encompassing, objective, dynamic processes. That includes sharply focused attention paid to distinctions among industries.
Previously CIC used a combination of Excel Spreadsheets, Outlook Email and Calendar reminders to track certificates of insurance for their clients.
The SmartCompliance Method
CIC was looking for a solution that fit their cost, feature, customizability, user support, onboarding and training requirements. They compared solutions ranging from SmartCompliance and MyCOI to CertFocus, CertNow, Docutrax, Versitrax and Ebix.
They selected SmartCompliance for several reasons:
- Centralization – One system for all compliance and monitoring needs for clients
- Communication – auto notification features reduced manual back and forth among their staff and clients
- Interpretation – OCR technology supports the centralized analysis of compliance of docs
- Efficiency and Accuracy – overall reduction in time spent on collecting and monitoring COIs, and more time spent on compliance and accuracy
- Customization – ability to tailor the system to best perform for each user, including custom email templates and custom documents (e.g. W-9’s or specific insurance endorsements)
Their favorite feature lies in how the OCR technology can establish auto-notifications by reading certificate of insurance expiration dates.
The ROI of Compliance Software
With the SmartCompliance software and enhanced services in place, CIC efficiently reviewed all client accounts, noted ongoing compliance needs and began addressing those that fell short. One client, for example, originally hired CIC for new loan/loan origination insurance due diligence reviews. CIC ensured the client’s collateral interests were protected for loan closing but did not perform ongoing services. However, CIC made note that compliance was a consistent issue for this client. Approximately 15% of the client’s portfolio was compliant when CIC reached out and offered to help using their new SmartCompliance software and compliance services in March 2018. Within two months, the client’s compliance percentage rose to 75% – a whopping 60% increase in compliance.
Ultimately, SmartCompliance helped CIC enhance the already valuable services they provide to their clients and significantly increase compliance percentages. As anyone in the risk management industry knows, tracking compliance and filling insurance voids, keeps companies protected against insurance claims and in business for years to come.
“We get to help people and businesses protect and understand their risks – minimizing potential catastrophic losses and gaps in coverages for those losses,” Rachael summarized.”
