California Workers’ Compensation Insurers Propose Rate Cut

The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau on Tuesday submitted a July 1 Pure Premium Rate Filing to the California Department of Insurance proposing advisory pure premium rates that average $2.02 per $100 of payroll.

The move follows a vote by the WCIRB Governing Committee last week.

The average proposed advisory pure premium rate is 16.5 percent lower than the corresponding industry average filed pure premium rate of $2.42 as of Jan. 1, and 7.8 percent less than the insurance commissioner’s approved average Jan. 1 advisory pure premium rate of $2.19.

The WCIRB highlighted the keys drivers of the WCIRB’s fifth consecutive proposed advisory pure premium rate decrease since 2015 in an executive summary of the filing.

Those drivers include downward medical loss development in part driven by continued acceleration in claim settlement, decreasing indemnity claim frequency and lower than projected loss adjustment expenses.

The WCIRB also noteed that while these loss and loss adjustment expense trends are reducing the indicated pure premium rate, high levels of lien filings, continued growth in cumulative injury claims and rising medical severities could erode the impacts of these trends and warrant continued monitoring.

The Filing and related documents are available in the Publications and Filings section of the WCIRB website. The CDI is expected to schedule a public hearing to consider the filing.