Q: Our local insurance broker said to brace yourself for the new rates on workers comp insurance. Is everyone seeing this?

A: I did some investigating and apparently so. The experts we use said several things are occurring that have driven up the rates including:

• Rapidly increasing costs for healthcare, specifically the treatments
• Loss ratios (currently running at $1.14 (meaning for every dollar of premium the carriers are spending $1.14) for a second straight year)
• More non- workplace injuries and fraud causing legal battles
• Higher unemployment in certain occupation categories that have produced new premiums.

All these factors when combined have gotten the increases started.

What I always suggest is doing a SOC/NAICS (formerly SIC) review to make certain you are paying a rate that best describes what you have your employees actually doing. We’ve found dozens of companies overpaying simply because of misclassification.

I suggest you take time to review our web site and verify these codes that determine your rates.

Overall the rates increased about 7% in 2011. If yours went up more than that let us know. CW