Insurance certificate

When live, this check will

Confirm the carrier carries active insurance at the limits your contract requires, from an insurer that the insurer itself confirms, and catch the forged Certificates of Insurance that Montgomery-style negligent-hiring cases routinely turn on.

This check is the most consequential piece of paper a broker puts in their file. Montgomery's concurrence singled out hiring "carriers that actually have a reasonable policy" as the fact pattern that defeats negligent-hiring claims. The insurance check is the documented version of that fact pattern.

Where the data will come from

Two paths run inside one check.

Path A — Auto, runs every vetting. Cross-checks the FMCSA Licensing & Insurance filing internally:

• Insurer name on file.
• Policy effective date in the past, expiration date in the future.
• Cargo (BMC-91) and auto liability (BMC-91X) coverage amounts meet or exceed contract minimums.
• Cancellation history visible on L&I.
• Insurer churn — multiple insurer changes within the last twelve months — as a separate flag.

This path uses only data already in the FMCSA mirror, and runs without any input beyond the MC number.

Path B — Conditional, runs when you upload a COI. When the broker uploads an ACORD Certificate of Insurance to the workspace, the check additionally:

• Parses the ACORD form for insurer, policy number, effective date, and limits.
• Cross-checks the parsed values against the FMCSA L&I record.
• Pulls the producer (insurance agency) email address from the ACORD form.
• Sends a fresh-certificate-request email to the producer, certificate-holder = the requesting broker. This is the standard broker move that any insurance agent handles regularly — the check just automates it.

Forged COIs collapse at Path B. A producer who didn't issue the COI either won't respond or will respond contradicting it. A producer who did issue the COI confirms it directly to the broker, generating a fresh, dated, signed certificate in the broker's name.

What you'll see

• L&I match. Insurer named on FMCSA L&I, policy effective range, current coverage amounts (cargo and auto liability).
• Coverage adequacy. Whether L&I limits meet your contract minimums. The contract-minimums field is configurable per broker; defaults follow industry-standard floors.
• Insurer history. Number of insurer changes in the last twelve months. Frequent changes are a known indicator of insurance-availability problems.
• COI cross-check. When you upload a COI, the parsed values alongside the L&I values, with discrepancies flagged.
• Producer confirmation. When a producer email is parsed and the fresh-cert request goes out, the status of that request (sent, confirmed, contradicted, no response within TTL).

Statuses:

• Clean — L&I active, limits meet minimums, no recent insurer churn, and (if COI uploaded) producer confirmed.
• Flag — limits meet minimums but recent insurer churn, cancellation history, or COI discrepancy from L&I that's within tolerance.
• Alert — limits below minimums, policy expired, FMCSA shows cancellation, COI materially contradicts L&I, or producer contradicts a submitted COI.
• Gray — no insurance on file (typically a carrier whose authority is inactive).

What this does NOT tell you

• It does not guarantee the policy will pay out on a future claim. Insurance policies have exclusions, deductibles, and reservation-of-rights clauses the check can't see.
• It does not verify the carrier's claims history. That data is not public.
• It does not detect a policy canceled between the FMCSA L&I filing and the load tendering. L&I daily refresh catches most cancellations within 24-48 hours, but there's a window. Path B (producer confirmation) is what closes the window.
• It does not validate auto liability limits against state- specific minimums for the lanes the carrier runs. The check validates against the broker's configured contract minimums, not against per-state regulations.

What to do with the result

Things people commonly weigh:

• Coverage at or above contract minimums is the floor.
• Recent insurer churn (three insurers in twelve months) is one of the few insurance-data patterns that genuinely correlates with operational distress.
• For high-value loads, the Path B producer confirmation is the strongest single piece of paper available. Brokers who routinely send for fresh COIs on every load are doing the Path B by hand — the check just makes it cheap.
• A carrier whose FMCSA L&I shows current coverage but who cannot produce a COI, or who produces one the producer won't confirm, is presenting the canonical forged-COI pattern.

A note on the future of insurance data

Insurance industry consolidation around aggregator APIs is ongoing as of 2026. If a neutral free-to-broker insurance API emerges — one that returns "policy X is in force at insurer Y" directly from the insurer — this check will use it as an additional Path. The check is designed pluggably so adding that path doesn't change the user-facing UX.

In the absence of an aggregator, Path B (producer email confirmation) remains the strongest available verification.

Why it matters under Montgomery

The concurrence is explicit that brokers who hire carriers with "a reasonable policy" should defeat negligent-hiring claims. Insurance verification is the literal version of that. A broker who can produce an L&I cross-check plus a producer-confirmed COI, both timestamped before the load tendered, is documenting the "reasonable policy" the Court named.

References

• FMCSA L&I public viewer — the underlying federal record.
• ACORD 25 — the standard COI form the check parses.
• BMC-91 / BMC-91X filings — the FMCSA insurance-filing requirements.