Saving a Client Over $23K on a Workers' Compensation Audit

Due to our speciality and focus in workers' compensation at Connell Insurance, Inc., we understand the complexity of workers' compensation and have a level of depth in the niche that is very rarely seen. Because of this speciality, we were recently able to save one of our clients over $23,000 on their recent workers' compensation audit in January of 2020 by finding a mistake in classification of payroll (class codes).

How you may ask?

When going thorough an audit, it's absolutely necessary to make sure the class codes that your payroll has been assigned to by your organization at the beginning of the policy period or by the auditor are correct. Actually, this is a step that should be done before your auditor even receives your payroll and your agent should sit down with you step by step and go through payroll/class codes to submit to your auditor a completed excel worksheet with everyone classified properly, ensure proper classification.

However, the preparation before the audit I very rarely experience, unless you are a client of Connell Insurance, Inc., and the mistake on classifications of payroll will typically take place if you do not classify the payroll out before hand. Therefore, in this case, if you feel that an audit may have been too high or a classification is off, you can submit a request to modify/adjust the audit to your workers' compensation carrier.

Lastly, there are hundreds of classification codes in the State of Missouri and in the country. At Connell Insurance, Inc., a part of our training is to go through the classification codes to gain a vast understanding of the rules around each code. For example, some codes you are allowed to split payroll and share with another code, whereas some codes have to be "all or nothing". Therefore, having a trusted partner review your classification codes for accuracy is an extremely important step in managing your workers' compensation program and examining for the possible use of lower rated class codes if your employees fit other descriptions.

If you would like to visit over your workers' compensation program, please reach out to me today. We are happy to identify areas of possible misclassification in your workers' compensation program and also assist employers in claims management, light duty, medical provider setup, and much more! Reach out to me today with any questions.