Every COI tracking platform claims to be AI-powered these days. But which ones genuinely use machine learning versus which are just automated legacy systems dressed up with AI-sounding features?
“AI washing” runs rampant in enterprise software—vendors label basic automation as "artificial intelligence" when buyers deserve to know what genuinely transforms their compliance process before investing thousands and migrating vendor databases.
With automated COI tracking, the difference between instant compliance feedback and a two-week manual review cycle means catching coverage gaps before they trigger claims—not discovering them during litigation.
Here's what we found when we evaluated insurance compliance software based on AI capabilities, user experiences, and measurable outcomes across five leading vendor compliance management platforms: bcs, myCOI/illumend, Get Jones, TrustLayer, and SmartCompliance.
While other AI-powered COI tracking platforms may only integrate one or two AI elements, bcs boasts three cutting-edge additions, supercharging your vendor insurance tracking experience with proprietary optical character recognition (OCR) technology, AI-powered endorsement review, and RiskBot—a newly launched AI agent.
Each of these addresses a real operational pain point that slows down compliance teams. Whether it's the hours wasted on manual task execution, the vendor friction created by slow certificate validation, or the cost of specialist review, bcs's three-part AI approach eliminates these friction points entirely.
1) Eliminates manual compliance bottlenecks with autonomous task execution
RiskBot represents the industry's first autonomous COI tracking agent, released by bcs in March 2025. Unlike chatbots that answer questions, RiskBot functions as what bcs calls a "compliance agent" that automates administrative tasks, interprets policy details, flags gaps, and executes custom workflows without human intervention.
Users set rules—say, auto-request renewals 30 days before expiration for vendors with active contracts—and RiskBot handles execution autonomously while providing 24/7 real-time compliance insights.
2) Cuts certificate validation from weeks to seconds
AI-powered OCR delivers instant feedback during document upload, a capability bcs contrasts directly with competitors: Users have long claimed Get Jones requires 24-hour validation, while myCOI historically took two days to two weeks for human review. bcs' proprietary engine scans certificates within seconds, extracts key fields, compares against requirements, and displays color-coded compliance status in real time.
Vendors see deficiencies immediately and can correct them before final submission, eliminating the correction cycles that delay project starts and vendor approvals.
3) Removes the need for licensed insurance specialists
Perhaps most uniquely, bcs offers an AI endorsement review. Endorsements—modifications to insurance policies—require specialized knowledge to interpret.
bcs' AI identifies endorsement types, extracts key information, and guides users through document understanding via an interactive Q&A walkthrough, removing a task that typically requires licensed insurance professionals.
Property managers using bcs typically save 15-20 hours weekly on compliance management, and bcs boasts a 99.9% accuracy in document processing and vendor insurance compliance verification—achieved by combining AI initial processing with certified risk managers available for complex cases at no additional cost.
The platform's 95% client retention rate and network of 78,000+ active, pre-verified vendors suggest the AI delivers sustained value rather than initial novelty. Notably, bcs makes full AI capabilities available even in its free COI tracking offering, supporting up to 25 vendors with no expiration—uncommon in enterprise software.
What sets TrustLayer apart from its competitors is Pulse. TrustLayer's Pulse network verifies what policies cover right now. And that distinction matters.
Traditional COIs are static documents representing coverage at issuance. A policy could be canceled the day after a certificate prints, and property owners wouldn't know until filing a claim. TrustLayer's Pulse network connects directly to insurance carrier systems for on-demand verification, detecting policy cancellations, coverage reductions, or limit changes in real time.
In December 2024, TrustLayer partnered with Nationwide Insurance to launch the industry's first on-demand commercial insurance verification. TrustLayer customers can now validate Nationwide policyholder coverage instantly by querying policy data rather than trusting paper certificates, which can be fudged or quickly out of date.
This addresses a genuine risk management gap: fraudulent or outdated certificates that appear compliant but provide zero protection. TrustLayer also claims a network of 298,810 companies and partnerships with "dozens of the largest carriers" for source-level verification, though specific carrier names beyond Nationwide aren't publicly disclosed.
Document Intelligence, TrustLayer's AI classification and extraction system, identifies document types (COIs, ACORD 25 forms, W9s, policies) without requiring templates. According to their product page, the AI extracts structured data from forms even when fields are misaligned or formatting varies, a practical advantage since certificates don't always arrive in pristine digital format. The system includes confidence scoring, flagging low-confidence extractions for human review.
TrustLayer combines this with computer vision for scanning poor-quality documents and robotic process automation for triggering workflows. This includes automated renewal reminders, deficiency notifications, and compliance tracking.
Lumie is illumend’s AI assistant, presented as a human-like guide to help risk managers and administrators with tracking certificates of insurance and the various nuisances that plague vendor insurance compliance. You upload the COI. Your subcontractor or vendor fills in the relevant information. And then Lumie flags compliance issues immediately.
According to product documentation, Lumie reads insurance contracts, extracts requirements, processes certificates, makes compliance decisions, and provides "yes," "not yet," or "fix this" guidance. Users can ask such questions as "Which partners are over 30 days non-compliant?" and receive instant answers, similar conceptually to bcs's RiskBot but launched seven months later.
If you’re unsure about committing to illumend, myCOI gives you a 60-day free trial period of illumend with the promise of a money-back guarantee if it doesn’t meet your insurance verification needs.
According to myCOI, illumend revolutionizes its legacy automated COI tracking platform by further transitioning away “from manual oversight to proactive AI-driven clarity.” This is to reduce human errors and expedite the insurance renewal process.
Launched in May 2025, illumend is still new to the market and user reviews are sparse. Most reviews on Capterra and G2 reference the legacy myCOI platform, not the new AI-powered illumend. So it’s difficult to discern how much of an upgrade this actually is, and whether illumend is a truly newfangled COI tracking system or a similar platform dressed up with fledgling AI trappings.
The company's 15 years of certificate of insurance tracking experience and its hybrid AI + human expert approach mirror successful competitors, but the newness of illumend means prospective buyers are essentially beta testing AI features with a limited track record.
SmartCompliance's AI positioning is the most limited of the five platforms. Or, at least, it’s not positioned as centrally as its competitors.
OCR is SmartCompliance's primary AI feature. The technology scans COI documents, transcribes text into machine-readable format, extracts key data fields (coverage types, policy numbers, limits, dates), compares against risk templates, and flags compliance issues. This works best with standardized ACORD 25 certificates but may struggle with non-standard formats.
Notably, SmartCompliance operates internationally, while focusing on the United States and Canada. For this reason, OCR works well on industry-standard forms, but you must input non-standard ones manually.
SmartCompliance's automated workflows, renewal notifications, compliance dashboards, and reporting might actually be more rule-based automation than machine learning. You’ll also quickly notice that other COI tracking platforms showcase their AI capabilities, while SmartCompliance merely references AI in a couple of blog posts from 2023 and 2024 as “future industry trends.”
SmartCompliance's positioning is refreshingly honest compared to competitors. They don't claim AI agents, predictive analytics, or machine learning when they're offering OCR and automation. For organizations needing basic certificate tracking with modest technology expectations, SmartCompliance delivers functional software. For those expecting advanced AI, the gap between SmartCompliance and COI tracking platforms like bcs, myCOI, or TrustLayer is substantial.
Get Jones secured $15M in Series B funding in January 2025 specifically to develop "a suite of AI-powered Agents" with autonomous decision-making capabilities. The funding announcement positions these agents as "smart assistants that automate routine tasks, reduce manual workloads, and offer autonomous decision-making" fine-tuned using proprietary insurance data from "millions of verified insurance documents."
That's future capability, not current product. As of November 2025, Jones operates primarily with AI-powered document processing combined with human expert review, which they describe as resolving the manual bottleneck. The AI extracts data from ACORD forms, validates against compliance criteria, and flags potential gaps, but human auditors make final verification decisions to ensure their claimed 99.9% accuracy.
So they appear to have not yet rolled out their AI agents, although some AI features are present, assisting with document processing and reviewing COIs. Document extraction and pattern matching are valuable in an automated COI tracking system, but certainly not revolutionary.
Organizations evaluating these platforms should request live demonstrations of specific AI features rather than accepting marketing claims. Ask to see:
Read the COI Tracking Software: Complete Buyer’s Guide for a more comprehensive look at the selection process.
While the industry has entered an AI era, bcs stands apart with genuine innovation that moves beyond marketing claims. RiskBot—the industry's first autonomous compliance agent—executes tasks 24/7 without human intervention. Combined with instant OCR processing and AI-powered endorsement review, bcs delivers measurable capabilities that competitors either haven't launched or remain unproven.
The difference shows in results: 99.9% accuracy in document processing, 95% client retention, 78,000+ pre-verified vendors, and property managers saving 15-20 hours weekly on compliance management. These aren't marketing claims—they're outcomes delivered by genuine AI innovation.
Stop gambling with manual COI tracking. This exposes your business to million-dollar liability gaps and wastes 15-20 hours weekly on administrative chaos. bcs’ proprietary AI delivers instant insurance verification, thousands of pre-verified vendors that accelerate onboarding, free-tier access with flexible upgrades that scale with your business, and 24/7 U.S.-based human expert support—ensuring you never face uninsured incidents. Contact bcs today.