Since Foxen was founded 7 years ago, one of our primary goals has been to guarantee our customers always have 100% renters insurance compliance. Since then, we’ve looked for ways to drive more efficiency, more absorption, and more NOI for property owners and operators, all while reducing risk and providing an unmatched resident experience.
In pursuit of that goal, we recently released new functionality that makes our proof of insurance processing the fastest in the industry. Our Certificate of Insurance, or COI, verification and processing now take as little as five seconds. This functionality allows residents to upload their proof of insurance via our digital channels and processes these documents to make sure they comply with the resident’s lease requirements nearly instantaneously. This delivers a better experience for:
- Residents who don’t have to wait days or weeks to know if they are complying with lease requirements
- Property managers who save time by not having to manually collect and process these documents – plus deal with resident follow ups and complaints
- Property owners and investors who don’t have to worry about residents with no renters insurance leaving them vulnerable to out-of-pocket costs from resident-caused damages.
To better understand how and why Foxen invested in building near-instant COI processing, I sat down with Foxen’s VP of Product, Squire Aschinger, to learn more about AI’s role in multifamily, COI processing, and the benefits near instant processing delivers to residents, property managers, and owners/investors.
Carolyn: To start off, what is COI processing?
Squire: Foxen's Waiver product helps properties ensure 100% compliance with renters insurance policy requirements. Residents have three options for compliance.
- Provide proof of a qualifying renters insurance policy, if they already have one
- Purchase renters insurance for themselves,
- Automatically enroll into a tenant legal liability waiver by not purchasing a renters insurance policy.
If residents prefer to purchase their own renters insurance policy, they're required to provide us with their policy document. When residents supply this document to us via mail, email, or our digital upload process, we check to make sure that it meets key criteria to fulfill the lease requirements. This is COI processing.
Carolyn: What are we looking for during COI processing?
Squire: First, we are verifying that the resident is listed as an insured party. We also check to make sure the property address is correct, and that the resident has the required liability coverage limits. Not all of our customers have the same minimum liability coverage limits. So, we need to make sure that the resident is meeting the specific requirements of their property.
We want to make sure the policy is active. And then, last but not least, we have to make sure that the required interested parties are listed, which needs to include Foxen’s address, so we are alerted if the policy lapses or is cancelled.
Carolyn: Why does COI processing matter?
Squire: COI processing is central to ensuring no gap compliance monitoring. It’s how we know which residents have their own policies, and whether or not those policies meet compliance criteria. It’s also what allows us to monitor the status of those policies throughout a resident’s tenure at a property.
Without COI processing and real-time monitoring property owners would be open to the risk of residents having expired or cancelled policies, which could lead to out-of-pocket costs in the case of resident-caused damages to the property.
Carolyn: Why did Foxen decide to pursue using AI for COI processing?
Squire: We are constantly looking at how we can best improve our products and core processes. Processing COIs is one of, if not the, most important processes to ensuring 24/7/365 compliance and high absorption rates with our Waiver Program. The speed at which COIs are processed impacts the experience we provide customers, the resident experience, our ability to reliably mitigate property risk, and ultimately maximize absorption. Because of this, we're driven to get our processing times down to zero, and we believe that AI was the best tool for doing so.
Carolyn: How long does COI processing take if you don’t use AI?
Squire: Without the use of AI, this process takes days instead of seconds. AI is enabling our ability to process COIs almost instantaneously.
Carolyn: Why does speed matter? What problem are we solving?
Squire: AI-enabled COI processing solves numerous problems, but the main one is resident frustration.
For residents, every day they are waiting for their COI to be reviewed, they are anxiously looking at a charge on their ledger for a product that they don't necessarily need due to having their own coverage. This eventually frustrates residents to the point that they reach out to their property managers and ask them what’s going on. It’s critical that we reduce that angst.
Another reason why near instant reviews of COIs are important is if there is a policy that's uploaded that doesn't meet lease requirements, we can promptly inform residents, so they can quickly make updates. While the property and resident would still be protected by the Waiver program, without that quick feedback loop the resident would be confused why they’re enrolled in the Waiver program when they thought they had a compliant policy.
Carolyn: How does near-instant COI processing deliver value for property owners or investors?
Squire: Our AI-enabled technology enables 24/7/365 compliance monitoring, which means properties are always protected. When a resident's policy is cancelled, we're able to immediately flip them over into our Waiver Program. Solutions that don't have that capability are waiting days to weeks to realize that residents’ renters insurance policies have been cancelled or expired. This leaves residents and properties vulnerable to risk, not to mention it reduces absorption rates and therefore the property’s ancillary income.
On top of our no gap monitoring, we also systematically remove and add charges based off of the resident’s COI status. If you think of the downstream process from COI monitoring, it's great to be able to review the documents, it's awesome to be able to know who is and isn't in compliance, but unless you have an ability to manage the charges systematically in real time you don't have an end-to-end high-performance solution in place.
Carolyn: What was the most challenging part of developing near-instant COI processing?
Squire: One of the complexities that comes with developing an AI-enabled model is that there are hundreds of insurers that we are processing documents for daily. Each one of those insurers has their own document format and structure. Therefore, the way that we develop the architecture of our models and how we process documents through our models needs to be extremely thoughtful because ultimately there's not one model that's going to satisfy all of our needs.
Carolyn: What role do you think AI is going to play in the future of multifamily?
Squire: First of all, efficiency. We’re using AI to take renters insurance compliance monitoring off of the property staff’s plate and give them time back. AI is going to continue to allow us to satisfy other use cases and help our customers make their property staff even more efficient.
This also improves the resident experience. Imagine a scenario where a resident has a question in the middle of the night that can be answered using AI. Instead of waiting for a property manager with lots of other responsibilities and tasks to respond to their specific need later, they get the information they need instantly.
Another use will be fraud prevention. Fraud is one of the biggest issues in our industry right now. Artificial intelligence will allow us to identify residents misrepresenting themselves at the time of move in or lease renewal more efficiently and at a much lower cost.
AI is also going to play a massive role when it comes to coaching property staff, too. One of the biggest challenges in the multifamily space is hiring, retaining, and training folks that are on the front lines. And when you're constantly bringing new folks into your organization, training becomes increasingly important and expensive. Using AI to power digital resources puts you in a much better spot.
These are just a few of the many roles I see AI playing in the future of multi-family, and more surface every day.
Carolyn: How will Foxen apply AI in the future?
Squire: We believe AI will transform how risk is managed, operations are scaled, and experiences are delivered in multifamily—but our customers will guide where that transformation happens first. Foxen is committed to solving the industry’s most meaningful challenges, and AI gives us the power to do that faster, smarter, and at scale. We're not just adopting AI—we're shaping how it redefines what's possible.
Get Started with Foxen
Interested in learning more about how Foxen’s AI-enabled technology can help your team save time, reduce risk and increase ancillary revenue? Schedule a demo with our team.
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