The Workers Compensation Rating System And Insurance Press – Different Timetables
The Workers Compensation Rating System was built as a delayed system. Why was that statement the first sentence in the article?
The Workers Compensation rating system cannot provide immediate data analysis. NCCI, WCIRB, and the other state rating bureaus allow for a term called claims development.
Claims departments do not review their claims weekly to see if the reserves are correct. See this article on how adjusters work their claims.
Any data from a rating bureau may look stale or out of date. The Workers Compensation rating system allows the claims in a certain policy to develop for an extra 18 months before the data is reported.
The UNISTAT date pegs the claim reserve data with the Total Incurred amounts 6 months after a policy ends.
A few articles are floating around in the press where the author seems astounded that the rating bureaus cannot provide immediate data reporting. I have even caught myself asking the WCIRB for immediate results.
Two weeks ago the NCCI produced a great teleconference that substituted for their Annual Issues Symposium. The lineup produced a great teleconference. The total attendance (including me) topped out at 2600. The platform NCCI used published the number of participants at the bottom of the screen.
NCCI could not answer this question and rightfully so – What are you seeing as far as COVID-related data? That answer was a stretch for the presenters.
Of course, the press wants to break new stories – that is why they call it the news. Press outlets want fresh data now. Unfortunately, if one takes a look at any statistical study that is based on rating data, most of them right now show solid data for 2018 and projected data for 2019. Why? Because once again, the Workers Compensation rating system originates from older data.
Let us use the date of the teleconference for the date a certain workers’ compensation policy ends. The date of the conference was May 12th.
Any COVID-19 related claims for a policy that ended (not started) on May 12th would not be reported to NCCI by the carriers until November 12 2021 or later.
Many reports that I write for clients always contain when the claims from a certain policy will take effect. I always receive questions on the timing of the data from new clients.
Feel free to search this blog for the UNISTAT date for more info.
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