Why I Built TrustLayer: The Certificate of Insurance Problem Nobody Was Solving

I've spent my career at the intersection of technology and transformation, watching industries reinvent themselves—or die trying. But nothing prepared me for what I discovered when I started digging into how companies actually manage third-party risk.

The answer? Mostly, they don't.

 

The Excel Spreadsheet Problem

When I started talking to risk managers about how they tracked contractor insurance, I heard the same story: someone maintained a massive spreadsheet. Certificates came via email, fax (yes, fax), and mail. They'd get filed in folders, scanned into shared drives, or lost in inbox purgatory.

Expiration dates? Maybe tracked. Actual coverage verification? Almost never. Whether the additional insured language actually protected the company? "We assume it does."

Anne Grubish from Kraus-Anderson told us: "When I started twelve years ago, all the certificates were on paper, and they were filing them on paper. I had just an Excel spreadsheet."

 

The Gap Between Assumption and Reality

Most companies believe they're protected by contractors' insurance. They have certificates to prove it. But certificates are just pieces of paper saying coverage existed at a moment in time. Policies get cancelled. Limits change. Endorsements have specific language that may not protect you.

That's why I built TrustLayer's real-time verification platform—not to replace human judgment, but to give risk managers the accurate, current data they need for informed decisions. The future of risk intelligence lies in this combination of automation and expertise.

 

Technology as Force Multiplier

The risk managers I admire aren't trying to automate away human judgment. They're using technology to extend their reach. When Anne Grubish reviews a certificate today, technology handles compliance checking—flagging gaps, tracking expirations, verifying endorsements. That frees her to assess context, build relationships, and make nuanced decisions about which risks are worth taking.

From collection to connection—that's how compliance strengthens vendor relationships rather than straining them.