Managing Third-Party Risk and Compliance Verification with Heffernan Compliance Management

Is compliance verification slipping through the cracks at your company? The average company has numerous contracts with multiple vendors and service providers. These contracts frequently require proof of insurance, licenses, and other types of documentation. Ideally, you should review the required documents on a regular basis to confirm continued compliance and to manage third-party risk, but companies rarely do this in a consistent and thorough manner.

Heffernan Compliance Management can help you control third-party risk once and for all without draining precious company resources or damaging vendor relationships.

Compliance Protects Both Parties

Strong business relationships require trust, but companies still need to perform due diligence.

Contracts that clearly stipulate each party’s requirements and responsibilities prevent disputes and protect both sides. Often, you must submit proof of both insurance and licensing as part of the agreement.

Unfortunately, the continuing verification of compliance often falls by the wayside. If one party lets its insurance lapse, reduces its limits, or removes the partner as an additional insured, the other party may not notice the issue until there’s a problem, and, at that point, it could be too late to do anything about it.

Non-compliance doesn’t necessarily stem from malice. A company might forget to review documents for compliance or fail to enforce insurance requirements. When neither side is reviewing contractual agreements, there’s a huge potential for non-compliance, especially in long-term partnerships that span multiple years or even decades.

Heffernan has developed a solution: the Compliance Management team uses an intuitive system that aids in automating insurance and compliance tracking. It sends document requests and makes it easy for your vendors to upload the requested documents. Then, the system automatically extracts information from different document types such as a Certificate of Insurance (COI), W9, Licenses, and more to verify that the company is compliant with the agreed contractual terms. If it’s not, the team works within the system to send out a new request to address the issue.

Stay on Top of Expirations

Tracking documentation is challenging because different pieces of documentation expire at various times throughout the year. One vendor might have a license that expires in March, an insurance policy that expires in June, and another policy that expires in October. The more vendors you have, the more difficult it becomes to keep up with everything.

Heffernan Compliance Management solves this problem with automatic expiration reminders. This means you never have to worry about missing an expiration date again.

Follow Up Automatically

Let’s say you have a vendor who needs to provide you with a new certificate of insurance. The vendor has promised to deliver it by the end of the week. Friday comes and goes without you receiving the document. Now, it’s Monday, and you’re debating what to do. As you need the certificate of insurance, you know you should ask for it again, but you don’t want to be annoying. You trust that the vendor has it and has simply been busy.

This is one way verification may fall through the cracks.

Heffernan Compliance Management solves this problem through automated follow-ups. You don’t have to worry about keeping track of who sent what or reaching out for the second, third, or fourth time because the built-in automation handles everything for you.

Preserve Relationships

There’s another reason compliance verification often falls by the wayside: people don’t want to risk damaging vendor relationships by nagging their vendors about documents.

While this is somewhat understandable, it ignores the bigger risk: if a problem arises and it then comes out that the vendor failed to maintain its obligations, the relationship will quickly become strained. Asking for a new certificate of insurance is a lot better than having to go to court to determine who’s liable after a loss.

Nevertheless, many people just don’t feel comfortable asking for documents repeatedly. Heffernan Compliance Management solves this problem by handling the documentation requests. You’re no longer in the position of having the ask for documents – it becomes something that happens automatically. And if you’re worried that the emails will sound “robotic”, take a deep breath because the Compliance Management team works with each company to build custom emails, so you still sound like you.

Make Things Easy for You and Your Vendors

Compliance verification is a hassle, but Heffernan Compliance Management makes it easy for everyone. It’s easy for you because you don’t have to worry about tracking expiration dates or following up for documentation. It’s easy for your vendors because they don’t have to sign up for anything to receive the requests.

As part of Heffernan Insurance Broker’s dedication to helping companies manage their risks, we offer Compliance Management services. Contact Sarah Wavers to learn more.