illumend CEO Kristen Nunery Says AI-Powered COI Software Should Help Companies Rebuild Compliance, Not Preserve Broken Processes

In a new article, Nunery explains why companies switching Certificate of Insurance (COI) platforms should use the transition to protect continuity, reassess inherited requirements, and rebuild workflows around actual third-party risk.

• illumend CEO Kristen Nunery says organizations adopting AI-powered Certificate of Insurance (COI) software should treat the transition as an opportunity to improve compliance, not simply move outdated processes into a new system.

• Nunery emphasizes that active vendor records, COIs, renewal timelines, open deficiencies, and audit history must be preserved. However, inherited insurance requirements should be reviewed to ensure they still reflect current risk.

• According to Nunery, AI creates the most value in COI management when it supports the full compliance lifecycle, including requirement setup, document review, coverage gap detection, vendor communication, renewal monitoring, and issue resolution.

• illumend uses a guided onboarding model to help clients configure vendor insurance requirements, load existing COIs, and align compliance workflows with actual organizational exposure.

• Nunery argues that AI-powered COI platforms must provide clear status, plain-language guidance, and actionable next steps for the operations, procurement, finance, and administrative teams that often manage COI compliance day to day.

Kristen Nunery, CEO of illumend, the next-generation AI platform redefining how companies manage third-party risk and insurance compliance, is urging business leaders adopting AI-powered Certificate of Insurance (COI) tracking and compliance software to treat the system switch as a chance to regain control over third-party insurance compliance.

In her newly published article, Nunery cautions that organizations often approach COI system migration as a copy-and-paste exercise: they preserve vendor records, transfer insurance documents, and recreate old workflows in a new platform. While continuity matters, Nunery says companies miss the real value of AI-powered COI software when they use it to accelerate the same unclear requirements, fragmented records, and unresolved deficiencies that created risk in the first place.

“AI can make COI compliance faster, clearer, and easier to manage, but speed is not the same as control,” said Kristen Nunery, CEO of illumend. “When companies switch systems, they need to preserve the records that matter while also reviewing whether their requirements and workflows still reflect the risks they are trying to manage.”

Nunery says the distinction between records and requirements is critical. She says active vendor records, COIs, renewal timelines, open deficiencies, and audit history should be carried forward so organizations do not lose visibility during the transition. But coverage limits, endorsements, vendor categories, and contract-based requirements should be examined before they are rebuilt into a new system.

“Records and requirements are different things,” Nunery said. “The records that support continuity need to come with you. The requirements need to be examined. A clean migration is not the same as a stronger compliance program.”

That distinction is becoming more important as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a core feature of Certificate of Insurance (COI) management software. Nunery says AI is most useful when it supports the full compliance lifecycle, not just document intake. Used effectively, AI-powered COI software can help teams review certificates, identify missing coverage, flag expiring policies, explain endorsement gaps, monitor renewals, support vendor communication, and move unresolved issues toward resolution.

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But Nunery cautions that AI should not be used to make weak workflows move faster.

“Document upload is not compliance,” Nunery said. “It is the beginning of the beginning of the compliance process. AI should help teams identify what is missing, understand why it matters, and move problems toward resolution. It should not simply make an unclear process faster.”

According to Nunery, onboarding is the strongest opportunity for companies to prevent old compliance problems from following them into a new platform. Instead of treating onboarding as a technical setup process, organizations should use the transition to review vendor categories, align requirements with actual risk, load existing COIs, preserve active compliance visibility and configure workflows that flag missing coverage, expiring policies and unresolved deficiencies in clear language.

illumend was designed around that controlled-refresh approach. As an AI-powered COI process management platform, illumend uses guided onboarding rather than a self-serve setup model. The company works directly with clients on account setup, vendor insurance requirement configuration, existing COI loading, and requirement alignment. The goal is to help organizations preserve the information they need while avoiding the automatic carryover of outdated requirements or unclear workflows.

Nunery also says modern COI compliance platforms must work for the people who manage compliance every day. Many COI users sit in operations, procurement, finance, or administration. They may be responsible for determining whether vendors have acceptable coverage, even when insurance is not their primary area of expertise.

A stronger system, Nunery says, should give those users clearer guidance.

“A dashboard is not a decision,” Nunery said. “A strong system gives people clear status, plain-language guidance, and a path to action. That matters because many of the people managing COI compliance every day are not insurance specialists.”

As more organizations replace outdated COI tracking systems, Nunery’s article offers a clear message: the goal should not be to recreate the old process in new software. The goal should be to use the transition to protect visibility, question inherited requirements, and build AI-powered workflows around real risk.

illumend’s platform supports that approach through guided onboarding, requirements alignment, AI-powered workflows, coverage gap detection, and plain-language guidance. The platform is designed to help companies maintain continuity while giving everyday users clearer direction on what needs attention, why it matters, and how to move compliance issues toward resolution.

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