Your Workers Comp Dec Page – Meat Of The Sandwich
Your Workers Comp Dec Page – know it or pay more premiums (sometimes a large sum).
In my last post, I summarized the Workers Comp Declarations (Dec) Page. At a bare minimum, you should have the page memorized if not more of the policy. As the old saying goes “Just give me the facts.” The Dec Page is the facts about your company’s Workers Comp policy. In fact, ALL of your insurance policy Dec Pages should be at your fingertips.
A quick examination of your Workers Compensation policy Dec Page will lead you to ask these questions:
- Estimated payrolls – Do the figures look plausible? If they look high, you are giving your insurance carrier a free loan. If they are too low, then you are going to have severe sticker shock at the time of the premium audit.
- Classifications – Are these the jobs the employees are performing?
- Discounts – Is this similar to your last policy? If not, why were there changes?
- Rates – Are these similar to your policy from last year?
- Credits – Similar to last year, any credits that were eliminated?
- Deposit premium for the policy period – Can you pay a smaller deposit premium and make monthly payments?
The first section of the page will be listed or shown as Item 1 and will show information about the named insured such as their name, address and entity type. Make sure that this matches your company’s info EXACTLY. I have seen major problems when the company covered has a slightly different name or address.
The next section may show as Item 3 and will be detail information concerning the policy itself and will include:
- Section A, Workers Compensation Insurance, this section will show the specific state in which the worker’s compensation applies – If your company is operating in a state that is not listed, your company could end up paying a Workers Comp claim out of pocket.
- Section C, Other States Insurance, lists each state in which other states coverage applies. This goes hand in hand with Section A. We have seen Workers Comp carriers deny coverage if a claim is filed in a state that is not listed in these sections.
Found within Item 4 will be the premium calculation statement – does this look right to you? Does it look similar to last year’s policy?
Also included on the Workers Comp Dec Page you will find:
StockUnlimited The audit term, usually set as annual but possibly another length of time, if it is set for quarterly or semi-annually the Workers Comp premium auditor will be auditing your company more than once a year. Does your company want to have that interruption more than once a year?
- The policyholder’s federal ID number and its experience risk ID number as issued by the governing rate-making authority for the resident state. This should match your company’s information exactly. The worst time to figure out that this information is incorrect when a major claim has been filed against your policy.
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