Author, Dave Garcia, President, Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc.

Last week the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) began developing emergency regulations resulting from the COVID-19 crisis that will be presented to the Insurance Commissioner in the coming weeks. The major areas to be addressed are:

Experience Rating Calculations

Dave Bellusci, Chief Actuary at the WCIRB, indicated that they are “leaning toward excluding COVID-19 claims from the calculation.” This would entail setting up new nature of injury and cause of injury codes that would identify these claims.

They are also leaning towards excluding the payrolls for workers who are not working because of the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders but who are still receiving all or a portion of their salaries or are being paid through sick leave benefits.

Class Code Classifications

Those sheltered-in-place workers who are being paid and either not working their customary jobs or not working at all has created a question about how that payroll should be classified for premium purposes. Should that payroll be classified in its usual class code or be adjusted into another class code such as clerical or a code specific to COVID-19. These are all questions being considered.

Any potential changes like these in question would be temporary and require that employers document how the employees in question were not working their customary jobs during this time and were performing clerical functions.

Our Answer

Rancho Mesa is collaborating with several regional and national workers’ compensation carriers on a form that will be able to capture this information for businesses affected by these new work restrictions. Accurate and accessible documentation will help both businesses and their workers’ compensation carrier make the necessary adjustments at audit.

At this point, these are only preliminary responses that are being discussed. While nothing has been passed into law, it seems highly likely that the WCIRB and the Insurance Commissioner will agree on some type of new legislation. When and if this occurs, we will provide full details and specific strategies to assist.

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