EXPERT WITNESS | COVERAGE ANALYSIS

Scott Margraves has over thirty-two years of “hands on” commercial property & casualty experience.  He is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Gulf Coast Risk Management, LLC (GCRM). GCRM provides research, analysis and advice to commerce, industry, government and individuals. Margraves operates COIs R Us, a certificate of insurance (COI) compliance and tracking company. COIs R Us compares the contractual obligations of a lease agreement with the COI. COIs R Us processes thousands of COIs for landlords and general contractors for compliance annually. GCRM provides consulting services to attorneys, property owners, asset managers, and general contractors regarding insurance placement, interpretation, and recommended contractual insurance requirements while explaining the relationship and alignment with indemnity and insurance provisions.  Mr. Margraves is well-versed in the placement of insurance policies from an insured’s perspective. As a front-line producer, he weathered forty-three (five major) hurricanes, three “five-hundred-year” floods and multiple catastrophic fire claims.  Agency roles include insurance broker, claims supervisor, agency partner, and risk manager. He is Past President of the Independent Insurance Agents of Houston, Past Vice Chairmen of IIAT IMPACT Region 10, Member of Insurance Academy, and Lifetime Committeemen for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Mr. Margraves started his second career as a full-time expert witness in 2020.  He brings extensive experience in all aspects of property & casualty insurance interpretation, policy forms, applications, claims, safety programs and contract integration. Mr. Margraves has been designated as an expert witness in 19 case assignments: 16 State cases and 3 Federal cases. Case assignments are divided between 10 for Defense and 9 for Plaintiff, including Arkansas, Illinois, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Texas. Expertise includes Bad Faith, Agency E&O, Standard of Care, Marine, Environmental, Surety & Bonds, CYBER, and Certificates of Insurance.

• Produced thousands of medium-sized commercial property & casualty accounts, including personal lines, life insurance, and group insurance policies.
• Direct involvement with hundreds of first/third-party casualty claims and settlements, including a catastrophic fire claim, all relating to the various types of property & casualty insurance policies.
• Collaborate with attorneys and risk managers to review and advise company insurance portfolios:
  • Consulting services regarding insurance policy interpretation;
  • Review, interpret and recommend contractual insurance requirements and understand their relationship and alignment with indemnity and insurance provisions;
  • Performance Reviews including broker selection, coverage recommendations, renewal placement, negotiations.

CERTIFICATE OF INSURANCE TRACKING & COMPLIANCE

After more than 33 years of reviewing certificates of insurance (COI), rarely were files complete.   Non compliance results in additional premium every final audit.  Expired, bogus, or undetected endorsements defeats the whole purpose of risk transfer.  In a claims situation, the fallout can be crippling or catastrophic.  Not only does outsourcing COI tracking save you time & money, improved compliance means piece of mind and a better night’s sleep.  Our tracking program is perfect for landlords, contractors and Owner Controlled Insurance Programs (OCIP).

     Manage COIs In One Centralized Location 24/7

• Get rid of the paper trails and file cabinets that are cluttering up your office and manage all your certificates, requirements, endorsements, agreements, & W-9
• Search through your certificates of insurance, documents and by name, field, compliance status and more in a fraction of the time
• Consolidate your certificates and corresponding insured data, to guarantee compliance and ensure subrogation coverage for your company

     Automate Certificate and Endorsement Collection

• Automated requests for missing or expiring certificates, reducing time spent manually monitoring COIs
• Create and send tenants/vendors/contractors (TVC) professional-looking emails and links to upload their certs online
• Provide TVC the opportunity to easily submit their certificates and other documents with a single click, reducing time spent during the COI communication process

     Eliminate Manual Certificate of Insurance Data Entry

• Our OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology automatically scan forms, transcribes information and compares your customized risk templates to guarantee compliance.
• OCR checked COI’s are double checked by dedicated team
• Quickly realize if your insurance requirements aren’t being met with our non-compliant notifications and highlighted areas on the certificate
• Know the instant a TVC is not compliant, so you can immediately follow up with the automated requests for more information

     Generate Insightful Internal and External Risk Reports

• All subcontract agreements, COI’s, endorsements in one place, make final audits a breeze and eliminate overpayments.
• Generate analysis and feedback reports on all system activity, employee productivity, duplicate insureds, insured compliance, bulk renewals, communications sent and more
• Export and download all reports in PDF or Excel format

     Quickly Set Up, Train Users & Receive Ongoing Support

• Easily import current compliance or insurance document data
• No installation or extensive user training is necessary
• Live customer support is always available for troubleshooting
• TVC’s insurance agent clicks link to upload

     No Installation Necessary

• With a username and password the system is instantly deployable via a web browser; no installation nor extensive user training necessary. Users can call live support staff or submit online support tickets for any issues, complaints.