California taxpayers paid out nearly $1Billion – some $845 million – for the 2019-20 fiscal year to provide workers’ compensation benefits to California state workers. The state pays claims but no premium. The total is up 5.2% or $41 million from the prior year and is up $123 million or 17% since the 2017-18 fiscal …
Chubb Limited (NYSE: CB) made an unsolicited bid to acquire The Hartford (NYSE: HIG) in what would be a $23 billion deal. Hartford’s board yesterday unanimously rejected the offer after reviewing it with its financial advisors. The merger would have shaken the the California workers’ compensation insurance market where each company is already a major …
California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund ended 2020 with just over $1 billion in net premium earned – a 14.6% decrease from the prior year. Just a few months earlier, however, the decline appeared to be much worse. At the midway point of 2020, State Fund was staring at a 20% drop in premium from 2019 …
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a proposed $227.2 billion state budget that includes emergency COVID-19 relief funding for businesses and unemployed Californians. The budget also calls for an extra $8.7 million to fund 43 new positions at the Department of Industrial Relations to implement chaptered legislation related to the pandemic and expanded worker protections. The $227.2 …
Changes now under consideration could double or even triple the number of experience-rated employers in California. The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau is researching changes that would give X-Mods to 250,000-300,000 small employers or more. The small employers are mostly claim free risks that would see a 5% credit mod, but those with workers’ comp …
California’s employers and insurance carriers are raising concerns that the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s proposed med-legal fee schedule (MLFS) update will increase costs more than is projected and, worse, create new friction points in the system. Employers assert the proposal does little to prevent billing abuse and that the Division’s proposal fails to ensure high-quality …
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara bucked both the insurance industry and his own Department in rejecting a plan for California’s already stressed insured employers to pay more in workers’ comp premium next year to cover COVID-19 related workers’ comp claims. California workers’ compensation remains quite profitable for carriers. COVID claims make up only 9% of the …
Through the first nine months of 2020, including seven months of a COVID-19 upended economy, the State Compensation Insurance Fund reports that its net premiums earned are off 18% from the prior year at $735 million. The carrier says a rate cut taken at the first of the year and a reduction in audit premium …