Evan Swan

Every workers comp policy has an audit. The deposit premium at policy inception is based on estimated payroll; the audit at policy expiration reconciles to actual reported wages and confirms classifications. When everything lines up, the audit produces a small return premium or a small additional premium and nobody thinks about it again. When things don't line up, the audit produces a bill — sometimes a six-figure bill — and the client lands in their broker's office wondering how this...

Loss runs drive workers comp underwriting more than any other input. The application gives the underwriter context. The X-Mod gives them a summary number. The loss run tells them the actual story. An underwriter who reads a 1.45 mod alongside a clean loss run with three closed claims sees a fundamentally different account than one looking at the same mod backed by twelve open claims with reserves climbing. Most retail agents treat loss runs as paperwork — request them, attach them to the...

Your client gets a non-renewal notice. You shop the voluntary market. Every carrier declines. After enough rejections you submit through ARAP, NCCI's assigned-risk channel, or to the state-fund equivalent in monopolistic states. The policy gets written — at top-band rates — and the client now sits in the residual market. This feels like a failure. It isn't, necessarily. Assigned risk exists precisely for accounts the voluntary market won't write at any price. The legislature built it so...