Case study · 2026-10-10

Liberty Mutual defense: $75K saved by gating subcontractor write-side actions.

A general contractor with a multi-state workforce was about to renew a $4.2M workers' compensation policy when their carrier's underwriting review flagged a subcontractor with a lapsed certificate of insurance. Liberty Mutual's posture: the GC's policy would not cover claims arising from work performed under the unverified subcontract. The defense cost alone, if a claim landed, was projected at $75K (Suffolk × NYU 5-year litigation precedent, MN 176.215 et al — when sub is uninsured, GC pays full WC).

What happened

The GC had been operating a manual certificate-of-insurance process. The safety team collected PDFs from subcontractors, stored them in a shared drive, and the project manager was expected to check the COI before any payment. The lapsed sub had a 12-month-old PDF on file, and the PM had a backlog of 80 COIs to review. The lapsed COI was missed.

What changed

The GC deployed Syntheka as a write-side gate on subcontractor payment actions. The flow:

  1. Subcontractor invoice arrives in NetSuite
  2. AI Agent computes the COI status (live integration with carrier APIs + the GC's COI archive)
  3. If COI is current: payment is staged for a 4-eye review by the project manager
  4. If COI is lapsed or expiring within 30 days: payment is blocked, exception is raised to the safety team, and the sub is asked to update
  5. All paths are recorded in the append-only audit trail with causal chain replay

Outcome

  • 8 lapsed COIs caught in the first 30 days of operation, before any payment cleared
  • Liberty Mutual renewed the policy at the requested rate — no defense posture
  • The $75K defense cost projection became zero
  • The PM backlog dropped from 80 COIs to 12, all auto-verified

What it cost

Syntheka Professional tier, $2,000/month, 2-month pilot followed by 12-month annual contract. Net ROI in the first 90 days: approximately 15x.

Read the full playbook

The construction compliance case study, including the approval DAG, the data model, and the integration with NetSuite / Sage / Foundation / Vista, is in /construction-compliance.