This is a time of year when we see many MTM member requests for a certificate of insurance or waiver of subrogation. Many of our shop members never need either of these items. However, if your shop does installation work of a product or is often at a customer’s plant location, you know full well about the use of these two documents. This year we’ve seen an uptick in the number of members that request these forms and thought it was a good time to review for all of MTM members.For a global perspective on these documents, you need to know that these are documents requested by customers of our MTM members. Neither document provides coverage for the MTM member, but rather it provides coverage certainty to the MTM customers. In the case of the certificate of insurance, if your worker is at a customer’s location and gets injured, the customer wants to know that you have workers’ compensation coverage. The customer does not want to “inherit” the injured worker’s claims costs. Similarly, for your shop if you hire a company to work at your plant and an employee of the hired company is hurt, does that company you hired have workers’ compensation coverage? If not, that loss most often moves to the next employer in line, which would be the MTM member. This “ladder” of coverage for workers’ comp was intended to find coverage for an injured worker. If his direct employer is not covered, then the system works up the ladder until coverage is found. With a certificate of insurance, you are getting certainty that an injured worker will be covered by his employer.

A waiver of subrogation is also protection for your customer. Take an example of your worker at a customer site, and the customer has an unsafe machine or something falls at the customer site that injuries your worker. The customer, in order to avoid liability, gets a waiver of subrogation from you that says any injury to your worker, whether it’s the customer’s fault or not, is the responsibility of you and your workers’ compensation carrier, in this case MTM. Often large employers, such as a GM, a GE, a Ford requires that before a subcontractor is allowed on their site that they have both a certificate of insurance and a waiver of subrogation. If you do not have one or both of these documents, they will not let you work at their site. The change this year seems to be that even if you’re not working directly at the site, some of these larger customers are requiring these documents.

As an MTM member and contrary to insurance industry standards, MTM provides you your certificate of insurance and waiver of subrogation for free. There is no per endorsement or per waiver charge. For many MTM members, these savings could amount to hundreds of dollars a year in fees. Another piece of good news, MTM processes nearly all of these requests the same day you request it. Our staff and systems are set up to get this to our MTM members immediately so they can begin their job. Our MTM mission requires us to take care of MTM members with speed that assists them to run a successful shop every day. Our work on certificate of insurance and waiver of subrogation documents is a part of that commitment.