We get a lot of phone calls and emails from employers all over the country who have received what we term a "Shock Audit" for Workers Compensation insurance. A Shock Audit is when an employer gets a premium audit bill from their Workers Comp insurer for far, far more than they had anticipated.
Today's call was from a Chicago area small construction company who has just received an audit bill for an additional $300,00.00 from their insurance company. In the past, they told me, previous audits had produced only modest changes in premium. But not this year!
The main problem is that this employer had relied upon Certificates of Insurance from some of their trusted long time subcontractors. These COI had documented that these folks had their own Workers Compensation insurance.
But when this contractor had their own premium audit done for their policy, the insurer informed them that these subs had a lapse in coverage and so that $300,000 bill. Now, the insurance company knew this but the insurer had also written the policies for the subs. But had not notified our new client when those policies had lapsed. But once the audit was done, the insurer was more than happy to explain the significance of this lapse.
We believe we can help this client knock down at least a great deal of the additional premium sought by this insurance company. And we're grateful to the client's attorney, who found us and recommended the contractor reach out to us.
And so, the game is afoot!
