Workers’ Compensation: Can Risk Management help your business?
If you’re losing sleep at night over your company’s Workers’ Compensation coverage, it’s time to look for better partner in insurance — like SECURA.
Dan Dudley, a Senior Risk Management Consultant with SECURA, is passionate about workers’ compensation and preventing claims for our Commercial, Farm-Ag, and Specialty Lines policyholders. “For many businesses, work comp is one of the biggest cost factors in insurance — both in terms of premium costs and claims expenses,” said Dan. “When we have the opportunity to work with policyholders, we can really make a difference in the success of their safety programs and, in turn, their businesses.”
A self-professed risk management nerd, Dan’s eyes light up with each site visit, especially when it’s a unique business, an evolving industry, or a team that’s becoming more focused on safety.
“Risk Managers serve two purposes with SECURA. First, we’re the eyes and ears of our Underwriting Team which quotes the insurance policy. Second, we help the policyholder with claim prevention strategies, especially workers’ compensation claims.”
Dan often works directly with a prospect’s agent, the business owner, leaders from safety, finance, and operations, or some combination of these roles. “It’s a collaborative effort to help your team work smarter and safer, based on the type and size of your business, and who’s in the best position to influence safety.”
From Dan’s perspective, there are three things business owners need to factor into their workers’ compensation insurance decisions.
- Experience Modification Factors (Mod) – A business’ mod is a huge factor in workers’ compensation premium costs and insurability. Even one claim can drastically influence that number. “The average mod is 1.0 per industry, and you’ll pay more with any carrier if you’re above that. Our goal is to help you reduce an elevated mod or work with you to keep your mod low.”
- Workers’ Compensation Claims Service – “At SECURA, we go beyond paying claims to help businesses assess and respond to injuries while containing costs and most importantly, helping an injured employee recover.” Services like our 24/7 Nurse Hotline, Return-to-Work Program, case management, and televisits are all complimentary, and they can reduce claims costs exponentially. “With Nurse Hotline, we’re seeing great results – 43 percent of injuries triaged by our nurses result in zero dollar claims.”
- Mods can take years to improve – There’s a lot of confusion around mods and how they’re calculated. “Your 2019 workers’ compensation rates will be determined by claims in 2017, 2016, and 2015. If you don’t have a risk management program in place, you need to make it a priority – like yesterday. We help our policyholders identify what to address first and help develop programs that can lower a mod.”
Did you know you can separate Workers’ Compensation from your other coverage?
According to Dan, it’s really common for a company to have property and liability insurance with one carrier and workers’ compensation with another. “There are a lot of reasons a company might decide to do this. First, if they have different degrees of risks, they might find it cost effective to separate their coverages with two carriers. Second, if they do have a slightly more complicated claims history, they may want a dedicated partner in workers’ compensation — rather than a carrier that’s just going to process claims and keep raising their premium.”