Excellent news out of the California Workers Compensation Institute (one of my favorite research outfits) that the frequency of comp claims has dropped significantly after enactment of reforms. The decrease, of 13% from 2004 to 2005, continues a decline that has seen comp injuries drop over 60% since 1990.
Self insured employers saw an even bigger decrease of 17%.
Even better news – according to Workers Comp Executive:
“n addition to frequency, claims costs have also started to decline thanks the recent reforms along with pure premium rates. CWCI points out that with claims frequency at a record low, additional rate decreases will depend on what changes state regulators, the courts or the legislature make to the current reforms.”
What does this mean for you?
A lower cost of doing business in California.
Feb
15
Perhaps you should read your own comments. Just a few days ago you attempted to discredit the comments by CorVel about claims volume being down, and now you have posted this data supporting the company’s comments. I realize this references only California, but we all know that CA represents a significant part of the market.
T-bone – actually, my comments and posts are entirely consistent.
I did not “discredit” CorVel’s comments; I did say that CorVel’s rather hefty decline in revenue was not entirely explained by the national decrease in claims volume, and that the company has other issues that likely had more impact on their results.
As to the significance of California, historically the state represents about 17% of the WC market. That said, it has experienced wild swings in results, costs, loss ratios and claims since open rating was instituted in the early nineties. Thus, one has to be careful about extrapolating from California, especially when you only look at one year’s data.