A vendor's insurance certificate has expired

Start by finding out the dates. A certificate shows a policy period, and the vendor's cover ended on the last day of that period whether or not anyone told you. Check whether a renewal has been issued and simply not sent, which is the usual case, or whether the policy has genuinely lapsed. A phone call to the vendor's insurance agent settles it quickly.

Then look at what is scheduled. If the vendor is due on site before a current certificate arrives, move that visit or hold it. Most lapses are paperwork that is a day or two late, and a short delay costs far less than an uninsured contractor on your roof or in your ceiling when something drops.

Track the renewal before it lapses

Most expired certificates were visible months earlier. Keep one list of active vendors with three columns: the general liability expiry, the workers' compensation expiry, and the date you last saw the actual certificate. Policies rarely renew on the same date, so a vendor can have one line current and the other lapsed.

Set a reminder at about thirty days before each expiry and ask for the renewal then. Vendors are far more willing to send paperwork in a quiet week than on the morning of a visit. If you onboarded the vendor with a proper packet, the dates are already in it. Our article on the vendor onboarding packet covers what to collect on day one, and the list above is how you keep it alive afterward.

Give one person the list. Compliance records owned by nobody are the ones that lapse, and a shared inbox is not an owner.

On the day it lapses with work booked

Sort the booked work by risk rather than by date.

• Hold anything at height, anything that opens walls or ceilings, anything involving heat, and anything done when the building is empty.
• Allow routine daytime visits for a short, written period if your contract and your insurer allow it, with a named date by which the certificate must arrive.
• Tell the property owner or landlord if their lease requires vendors to be insured and the lapse falls inside the term.

Put the decision in writing to the vendor right away. A short email stating the policy expired on a given date, what is on hold, and what you need to release it is enough. It also makes you the party who acted, which matters if a claim comes later.

What to ask for as the replacement

Ask for a current certificate issued by the vendor's agent, with the new policy dates on both general liability and workers' compensation. Check that the certificate holder and additional insured wording match what your contract or lease requires, since a renewal sometimes drops an endorsement that the old policy had. Our article on what a COI is and what to read on it goes through those fields.

Read the dates, not the stamp. A certificate with a recent issue date can still show a policy period that has already ended.

If the vendor has a workers' compensation exemption instead of a policy, the exemption has its own expiry. Ask to see it in the same way.

How to record it

Keep the old certificate and the new one together in the vendor file, with the date the replacement was received and who checked it. Note any period in which work took place without current cover, and what you decided at the time. If an insurer, auditor or landlord asks for your vendor records, a file that shows the lapse noticed and handled looks far better than one that quietly has a gap.

Photograph or log the work done during any grace period. Dated photographs of what the vendor did, and when, are cheap to take and hard to reconstruct.

When it keeps happening

One late renewal is an administrative slip. A second is a pattern, and it belongs in the annual vendor review alongside missed visits and invoice disputes. If the paperwork is the weakest part of an otherwise adequate vendor, ask whether the work itself could move to someone who documents well. Our article on changing maintenance vendors covers how to do that without leaving the building uncovered in between.

Our own certificate, and the contractors

TrionX carries general liability and workers' compensation, and we send the certificate on request, with the policy dates current. Doors, locks, hardware, glass repair, painting, carpentry and routine general maintenance are performed by our own technicians, on our payroll and background checked, so one certificate covers the visit.

Electrical, plumbing, HVAC and refrigeration need a state license at any job size, so those are carried out by licensed, insured contractors, coordinated and documented by TrionX. We collect and check each contractor's current certificate before they attend, and we keep it with the job record, so the renewal dates are not left for you to chase.