illumend CEO Kristen Nunery Says AI Can Finally Standardize COI Review--Without Standardizing the Documents

As audit demands and third-party risk increase, Nunery says AI can bring consistency, explainability, and defensibility to Certificate of Insurance (COI) decisions by evaluating messy submissions against actual requirements

Key Takeaways

• According to illumend CEO Kristen Nunery, the future of COI management is standardizing the review layer, not the insurance documents themselves.
• In Nunery's view, AI can turn messy Certificate of Insurance (COI) submissions into more consistent, requirement-based compliance decisions.
• Nunery argues that manual COI review is creating unnecessary delay, inconsistency, and compliance risk for businesses.
• As Nunery sees it, legacy COI tracking tools may help collect and track documents, but they do not solve the hardest part of insurance verification: determining whether the coverage in those documents actually meets the underlying requirements.
• Nunery's broader point is that AI can make COI review more explainable, defensible, and scalable without replacing human judgment.

INDIANAPOLIS, April 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Kristen Nunery, CEO of illumend, the next-generation AI platform redefining how companies manage third-party risk and insurance compliance, today calls on organizations to rethink one of the most entrenched assumptions in Certificate of Insurance (COI) review: that because every submission looks different, the review process itself cannot be standardized.

Nunery makes that case in her article, "Every COI Looks Different—It's Impossible to Standardize": How AI Is Finally Solving COI Data Chaos. She argues that the real opportunity is not to force uniformity across certificates, endorsements, schedules, and attachments, but to create a more consistent way to evaluate them against actual insurance requirements.

The article comes as organizations face growing audit pressure, rising third-party risk, and heavier documentation volume across properties, projects, vendors, and business units. In many environments, COI review still depends on manual interpretation of fragmented paperwork. This creates reviewer variability, approval delays, rework, and added compliance exposure.

According to Nunery, that ongoing friction stems from a flawed premise. Too many organizations, she says, treat COI review as a document collection exercise when it is really a contextual compliance decision. Collecting paperwork is only one step; the more important question, she says, is whether the submission actually satisfies the insurance requirements tied to a specific lease, contract, property, or project.

"Every COI does not have to look the same for review to be consistent," said Kristen Nunery, CEO of illumend. "That is the shift. The opportunity is not to standardize the documents. It is to standardize the review layer. AI can read across fragmented submissions, surface the details that matter, and compare them to real requirements in a way that strengthens consistency, explainability, and defensibility without losing human oversight."

In the article, Nunery explains that legacy systems have improved document collection and renewal tracking, but they have not solved the most difficult part of the workflow: interpreting what was submitted, matching it to requirements, and identifying what is missing or misaligned. She argues that this "interpretive middle" is where delays, inconsistency, and risk tend to build.

Nunery argues that AI is now practical for this work because it can read across certificates, endorsements, and attachments, then normalize key fields like coverage, limits, and dates. She says this allows teams to move beyond basic data extraction and toward true requirement-based review.

Looking ahead, Nunery argues that organizations that standardize the review layer will be better positioned to reduce approval friction, lower rework, strengthen audit readiness, and improve consistency across teams. Those that continue to rely on document collection and manual interpretation alone, she says, will face greater strain as complexity and scrutiny continue to rise.

To read Kristen Nunery's article, "Every COI Looks Different—It's Impossible to Standardize": How AI Is Finally Solving COI Data Chaos, visit https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/every-coi-looks-differentits-impossible-standardize-how-nunery-j50xc/.

For more information about illumend's approach to AI-driven COI review, request a briefing or demo: https://www.illumend.ai/schedule-a-demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can Certificate of Insurance (COI) review be standardized?
According to Kristen Nunery, CEO of illumend, Certificate of Insurance (COI) review can be standardized at the decision layer even when the underlying documents are inconsistent. She explains that AI can be used to interpret certificates, endorsements, schedules, and attachments against actual insurance requirements instead of forcing every submission into the same format. That approach, Nunery says, makes COI review more consistent and easier to defend.

How does AI help with messy COI submissions?
AI helps by reading fragmented COI packages and normalizing the details that matter for review. According to Nunery, it can identify coverage, limits, dates, entity names, endorsements, and additional insured language across multiple documents, then compare that information to contract, lease, property, or project requirements. This, she says, moves the process beyond basic document collection and extraction.

Why is manual COI review creating problems for organizations?
Manual COI review creates delays, inconsistency, and added compliance risk when reviewers must interpret varied insurance paperwork by hand. Nunery says the hardest part of the workflow is the "interpretive middle," where teams must decide whether a submission actually satisfies the requirement. In high-volume environments, that can lead to stalled approvals, rework, and weaker audit readiness.

Can AI replace human judgment in COI review?
Nunery advocates positioning AI as a review support layer, not a replacement for human oversight. She says AI should surface missing details, mismatches, and next steps in a way that helps reviewers make clearer and more defensible decisions. The goal, she says, is a more explainable workflow that scales without reducing accountability.

About illumend
Founded in 2025, illumend™ is the AI-powered platform redefining how businesses manage third-party insurance compliance and risk. Backed by myCOI, the leader in third-party insurance compliance management with more than 16 years of expertise, illumend reimagines compliance by guiding every step of the process—from document review and expiration tracking to risk flagging, communication and resolution—within one intuitive system. Built on myCOI's institutional foundation—having processed more than 45 million documents, managed over 1.2 million agreements, cleared more than 750,000 third-party partners, and identified more than two million coverage gaps before claims—illumend brings this depth of compliance intelligence into an AI-native platform. At its core is Lumie, illumend's conversational AI guide that reads complex insurance documents, flags issues in real time and explains them in language anyone can act on. To learn more, visit https://www.illumend.ai.

Media contact:
Michael Tebo
Gabriel Marketing Group (for illumend)
Phone: 571-835-8775
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE illumend