Same-Day COI Requests Are Eating 15 Hours of Your Week

It was 2:47pm on a Tuesday when the email came in:

“Need COI for the job site by 3pm. Sending over certificate holder info now. Thanks!”

The CSR at a commercial insurance agency in Phoenix looked at the clock. She had 13 minutes to:

1. Find the client’s general liability policy in Applied Epic
2. Log into the carrier portal (hoping she remembered the password)
3. Navigate to the policy documents
4. Generate an ACORD 25 certificate
5. Fill in the certificate holder information (name, address, coverage details)
6. Download the PDF
7. Email it to the client and the certificate holder

She made it. COI delivered at 2:58pm. The client could start work on the job site.

Then, at 3:14pm, another email:

“Actually, they also need the umbrella policy listed on the certificate. Can you send an updated one?”

Now she had to go back, log into a different carrier portal (the umbrella policy was with a different carrier than the GL policy), generate a second certificate, or regenerate the first one with both policies listed.

By the time she finished, it was 3:35pm. She’d spent 48 minutes on two COI requests.

That day, she handled 11 COI requests. By 5:00pm, she was two hours behind on renewal calls.

The COI Volume Problem

Certificates of insurance aren’t a profit center. They’re a free service you provide to commercial clients. But they’re also one of the most time-consuming administrative tasks in a commercial agency.

Why? Because COIs are reactive and urgent.

A contractor doesn’t realize they need a certificate until they show up at the job site and the general contractor asks for proof of insurance. A tenant doesn’t think about it until they’re signing a lease and the landlord requires it. A vendor doesn’t request it until they’re finalizing a contract.

By the time the request hits your inbox, it’s always “need this today.”

For agencies with 100+ commercial clients, COI requests are relentless. One week you’ll get 8 requests. The next week: 24. There’s no predictability. You can’t batch them. You can’t schedule them for slow periods.

And if you take too long, the client loses the job, misses the contract, or can’t move into their new office space. That’s not a customer service failure — that’s a business relationship failure.

Why COI Generation Takes So Long

The process should be simple: pull up the policy, fill out the ACORD 25 form, send it to the client.

But here’s what actually happens:

Step 1: Find the policy

Client calls and says “I need a certificate for my GL policy.” You search Applied Epic by client name. They have three entities. Two of them have GL policies. Which one does the client need?

You call them back. “Is this for ABC Contractors LLC or ABC Property Management LLC?”

Client: “Uh, I’m not sure. It’s for the job at 123 Main Street.”

You check both policies to see which one covers work at that location. 5 minutes gone.

Step 2: Access the carrier portal

You find the right policy. Now you need to generate the certificate. Some carriers let you do this directly in your AMS. Most don’t. You have to log into the carrier portal.

Except you don’t remember the password. You reset it. Wait for the email. Log in. Navigate to “Certificates” or “ACORD Forms” or whatever the carrier calls it.

Another 5 minutes.

Step 3: Complete the certificate holder information

The client forwarded you an email with the certificate holder’s information. You copy-paste the name and address into the ACORD 25 form. Except the carrier’s form has character limits that cut off the address, so you have to abbreviate.

Then you fill in policy numbers, coverage limits, effective dates. If the client has an umbrella policy with a different carrier, you have to pull that information separately and add it to the certificate manually.

Another 5 minutes (if nothing goes wrong).

Step 4: Deliver the certificate

Generate the PDF. Download it. Email it to the client and the certificate holder (if they specified an email address). Sometimes the client needs two copies—one for the GC, one for the property owner.

2 more minutes.

Total: 15-25 minutes for a single certificate, assuming everything goes smoothly.

If the carrier portal is slow, if you can’t find the policy immediately, if the certificate holder information is incomplete or unclear, it can take 30+ minutes.

The Carrier Portal Fragmentation Problem

If all your commercial clients were with one carrier, COI generation would be fast. Log into one portal, generate certificates all day.

But that’s not how independent agencies work. You place clients with the carrier that offers the best coverage and pricing for their specific risk profile.

That means:

• Client A’s GL policy is with Travelers
• Client B’s GL policy is with Hartford
• Client C’s GL policy is with Zurich

Each carrier has a different portal. Different login. Different interface. Different certificate generation process.

Some carriers let you generate certificates instantly. Others make you fill out a request form and wait 24-48 hours for the carrier to email you the completed certificate (completely useless for same-day requests).

Some carriers integrate with your AMS and let you generate certificates without leaving Applied Epic. Most don’t.

The fragmentation means your CSRs are constantly toggling between systems, remembering which carrier has which process, and working around carrier limitations.

The Client Self-Service Approach

Some agencies have tried giving clients portal access to generate their own certificates. The idea: instead of calling or emailing the agency, the client logs into a portal, selects the policy, enters the certificate holder info, and downloads the certificate instantly.

This works for about 30% of clients. The other 70% either:

• Forget their portal login and call the agency anyway
• Can’t figure out the portal interface
• Enter incorrect information (wrong policy, wrong limits)
• Still prefer to have the agency handle it

Client self-service is a nice option, but it doesn’t eliminate the workload. You’re still fielding calls and emails from clients who can’t or won’t use the portal.

The better approach: make the request process simple for the client (web form or email), but handle the generation on the backend automatically so the CSR doesn’t have to manually fill out ACORD forms.

The Hidden Benefit: Relationship Preservation

Here’s the thing about COIs that most agencies don’t fully appreciate: responding to COI requests quickly is one of the easiest ways to demonstrate value to commercial clients.

When a contractor calls at 2:30pm and says “I need a certificate by 3pm,” and you deliver it at 2:55pm, you’ve just saved them from losing a job. They remember that.

When a tenant is signing a lease and the landlord requires a certificate, and you deliver it within an hour, you’ve removed a stressful barrier. They remember that.

COI responsiveness is a low-cost, high-impact touchpoint that reinforces why clients stay with independent agents instead of going direct to carriers or using online quote tools.

But if your COI process is slow—if clients have to call twice to follow up, if certificates take 2-3 days, if you make errors that require re-issuing—you’re turning a relationship-building opportunity into a frustration point.

Automating COI generation isn’t just about saving CSR time. It’s about making sure every urgent request gets handled instantly, every time.

What Good COI Automation Looks Like

I worked with a commercial agency in Seattle that was drowning in COI requests. They had 180 commercial clients and were averaging 22 COI requests per week. At 20 minutes per request, that was 7+ hours of CSR time every week just on certificates.

We built an automated intake process:

1. Client-facing form: Clients access a simple web form (or email a dedicated address) with three fields: policy type, certificate holder name, certificate holder address.

2. Automated policy lookup: The system searches Applied Epic for the client’s policy based on the submitted policy type.

3. Certificate generation: For carriers with API access or portal automation, the system logs in, generates the ACORD 25, and downloads it automatically. For carriers without automation, the system drafts the certificate details and sends the CSR a pre-filled template to copy-paste into the carrier portal.

4. Instant delivery: Certificate is emailed to the client and certificate holder within 5 minutes of request submission.

Result: COI turnaround time dropped from 20 minutes to under 5 minutes. CSR time on COIs dropped from 7 hours/week to 2 hours/week (mostly handling edge cases and manual carrier portals).

Client satisfaction on COI responsiveness went from “acceptable” to “exceptional.” The agency started promoting their sub-5-minute COI turnaround as a differentiator when competing for new commercial accounts.

The owner told me: “We used to dread COI requests. Now we’re proud of how fast we handle them. It’s turned into a competitive advantage.”

The Bottom Line

COI requests will never go away. They’re a fundamental part of serving commercial clients. The question is whether you’re going to let them consume 10-15 hours of CSR time every week, or whether you’re going to automate the process and turn urgent requests into 5-minute wins.

When a client needs a certificate by 3pm and you deliver it at 2:50pm, you’re not just completing a task. You’re demonstrating competence, responsiveness, and value. That’s what keeps commercial clients loyal—even when a competitor offers them a slightly lower premium.