Illinois Workers Comp Rates Down--Premiums, Not So Much

Here's an interesting article from Business Insurance about how Illinois construction companies have not seen a decrease in Workers Comp premiums, even though there have been highly touted reductions in insurance rates in recent years.

This illustrates something I have written about before--just because manual rates go down, it doesn't mean the actual premiums paid by employers do the same. For one thing, this reduction in manual rates has coincided with a change in the NCCI experience modification factor formula. So even as manual rates decline, many employers have seen sharp increases in experience mods that more than offset any rate decreases.

And of course, there are lots of mechanisms for insurers to offset manual rate reductions in other ways, mainly by adjusting the use of Schedule Credit or Debits.  So a decrease in manual rates doesn't translate to an automatic decrease in premiums in the so-called Voluntary Market. And even in the Assigned Risk Plan, the change in the experience mod formula would more than offset the manual rate decrease for many employers.

Something to keep in mind when politicians hype the effectiveness of recent "reforms" in the benefits paid to injured workers.