Kansas Workers’ Comp Rates to Drop Next Year

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer announced that many business owners in the state will pay less for workers’ compensation insurance in 2017. It will be the second consecutive year for workers’ comp rate decreases in Kansas.

Many of the approximately 65,000 Kansas businesses that purchase workers’ compensation insurance will be affected by the decreases, according to the Kansas Insurance Department.

The 2017 rate filing by the National Council on Compensations Insurance Inc. (NCCI) for workers’ comp shows a decrease of 8.4 percent in the voluntary base rate and a decrease of 7.8 percent for assigned risk workers’ compensation rates. Adding together the rate decreases Kansas business owners saw in 2016, over a two-year period, the rates will have dropped 20 percent in the voluntary base rate and 18 percent in the assigned risk rate.

Voluntary workers’ compensation base rates are used by all insurance companies writing workers’ comp in the competitive market. Assigned risk rates are used for insured businesses in the Kansas Assigned Risk Plan, a state organization for those businesses who are unable to obtain coverage in the competitive market.

In the voluntary market, there was a 7.2 percent drop in experience (the number of claims filed for the three most recent policy years), and a 2 percent drop in medical and indemnity trends. Increases in benefits, and loss adjustment expense made the total an 8.4 percent overall decrease.

In Kansas, 65 percent of workers’ compensation benefit distribution goes to pay medical claims, and 35 percent goes to indemnity claims, according to statistics from the NCCI.

The new filings were approved for a Jan. 1, 2017, effective date.

NCCI prepares workers’ compensation rate recommendations and manages the nation’s largest database of workers comp information.

Topics Workers' Compensation Kansas