Ep. 82 Workers' Compensation Deductibles episode artwork

EPISODE · Mar 16, 2021 · 32 MIN

Ep. 82 Workers' Compensation Deductibles

from Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ Safety and Risk Management Network · host Rancho Mesa Insurance Services

Dave Garcia, president of Rancho Mesa Insurance and Rob Darby, president of Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies, discuss deductible workers' compensations, its structure, the characteristics, and when it might be an option for a business owner. Show Notes: Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter. Director/Producer: Alyssa Burley Host: Dave Garcia Guest: Rob Darby Editor: Lauren Stumpf Music: “News Room News” by Spence, "Elevators Need Rock Too" by Spence, "Home" by JHS Pedals © Copyright 2021. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Mar 16, 2021

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Ep. 82 Workers' Compensation Deductibles

0:00 32:57
of MATCHES

TRANSCRIPT · AUTO-GENERATED

This episode is sponsored by Berkshire Hathaway Home State Company's BHHC, a leading national rider of workers' compensation insurance, with the highest possible AM Best Rating of A++15. BHHC represents financial strength and integrity. Hi, this is Dave Garcia, President of Rancho Mesa, and thank you for joining me and listening to my interview with Rob Darby, the President of Berkshire Hathaway Home State Company's Workers' Compensation Division, brought to you by Studio One, our Safety and Risk Management Network. In today's show, I'll be talking with Rob about deductible workers' compensations, its structure, the characteristics, and when it might be an option for a business owner to consider.

So Rob, welcome back to the show. Hi, thanks Dave, thanks for having me, appreciate it. So to begin with, Rob, let's talk a little bit in general terms about what deductible workers' compensation is and how it works. So are there various levels of deductible workers' compensation out there?

Yeah, I mean, I think you could probably categorize deductibles in many free buckets. You've got sort of small deductibles, which may be only $500,000 to $25,000, and a company will take that portion of every claim. And you've got mid-range deductibles, which might range from like $5,000 to $25,000 or $50,000. And you've got the larger deductible policies, right, which is where each, where an account risk may take the first $100,000, or first $250,000, or $500,000, or a million under every claim.

Obviously, that only really applies for those accounts that are kind of re-handing accounts, the larger ones. But, you know, so I break them up into kind of like three different levels, and we offer all three of them ourselves. Okay. Are there a lot of other companies that offer all three levels of that, Rob?

Yeah, no, I think a lot of them do. I think the mid-range deductibles are probably one that, this is maybe where we're somewhat unique, and I think there are others that operate, but we seem to write more of them than maybe some other people. The small deductibles are kind of interesting, because outside of California, in some states you have to provide them, you have to offer them, right? So you don't really have a choice.

In California, you don't have to offer them if you don't want to. But outside of California, you do. So you'll see a lot of thousands, $2,500, $5,000 deductible levels in some of the states that I've got. But in California, you can offer them and take them or not take them.

But I would say that the mid-range deductibles are a bit unique for us, and the smaller and large deductibles, you see fairly common. Okay, that's good to know. So for the businesses that will be listening to us today, Rob, let's just talk in general terms about what are some of the characteristics that might make up a good deductible candidate for your business? Is it your industry, your premium size, frequency, severity?

I mean, what do we look for? Yeah, those are great questions. I mean, I'll start with the easy one first, right, which is premium size. The bigger the account, the more able and I guess more sophisticated, generally, the large account will be in terms of the business manager program, right?

So if you're a million-dollar guarantee cost, workers' comp risk, then you're probably going to have a manager, you're going to have a safety director, that kind of thing. You have to be paying attention to the workers' comp spending because it's probably that's a million dollars a lot of money, so that could be significant for a company. So those are companies that will start to look at things like their total cost of risk, which will include the cost of the premiums, which will include deductible cost if you decide to go that way. So the larger the account, the more likely they are to be candidates for the larger deductibles.

In terms of what type of account is best suited for a deductible, it kind of depends, right, on the account itself. What's interesting is that some accounts have a high tolerance for taking on risk, and others have no tolerance for it at all. There are some accounts where, let's say they have some bad experience in the prior three or four years, the market is looking at them sort of unfavorably, and they're going to have a guarantee cost premiums going to be X, and they say, well, that's just essentially a high demand for something. They feel like they've implemented risk management policies or safety policies, whatever, and they say, look, we're going to take risk because we think that you're underestimating our ability to control our losses, and we get our losses going to be less now than they were disorderly.

So the benefit that a company would get then is they get the credit off their premium, right? So they're upfront going in cost is lower, and if the amount of money that they pay within the deductible is less than the credit they got from their premium, this would deal for them, right? So it kind of depends on the account and what their experience is like. So frequency accounts are certainly, from a carrier standpoint, a lot of times you'll be asked to go into a deductible program if you've got a real run of frequency, for example.

So for your healthcare account, you've got a number of, let's just say you've got a number of high-frequency clients or whatever, you may find that the market says, well, I'm going to offer you a general, a GC quote, but we're going to offer you a deductible, but sometimes you're forced into it if you're a particular accountant. That's sort of characteristic. The severity of the accounts are kind of interesting because let's say you're a roofer or you're a tree trimmer or something like that, the losses you have may be fairly significant, right? If you do have, the fall protection doesn't work and someone falls through the skylight or someone falls out, you know, off the tree when they're trying to trimmer, whatever.

Those are going to be increasing, I'm pretty severe. So the larger deductible programs there can be good for an insurer or they can be really bad for an insurer depending on what the experience is. So on some of those, a little bit of a roll of the dice, you know what I mean? So you get a premium, so you're up front billing in costs are definitely going to be lower, but if you do have a claim, you're going to be eating a lot of that yourself, right?

So, you know, it's a little bit more, that's a little bit more, that's a little photograph shoot, and you have to decide whether as an insurer, whether you're going to take on that kind of, whereas a lot of companies literally can't budget for that. I mean, they just don't, they can't handle the variability, right? So a lot of companies will say, no, we need to certainly get a guaranteed cost premium, and that's why you'll see some people gravitate with that, you'll see others that have very high tolerance for risk, and I want to share this with you, and we love it when companies want to share this with us. We think that's a really good way to create a partnership with a company in terms of they take some loss, we take some loss, and we work together to try to mitigate that, right?

We both know that's keeping claim costs low, right? So there's sort of some nice CBI relationships that occur where you have a deductible program with somebody who needs that kind of program. Yeah, I can see that. So, Rob, let's dig into the particulars of a deductible program a little bit.

I've got tons of questions here, but so they're not in any particular order, but I'm just trying to anticipate what maybe some of the business owners who aren't familiar with it might be questioning in their mind. So how would the business be built on a deductible plan? Is that each time a claim happens or getting a bill, or is it billed on a monthly basis, or how does that work? Right, so generally it's billed on a monthly basis based on what we have paid out, and then we ask for reimbursement on that.

So every month we'll look at the claims that are within the deductible that we've paid out on behalf of our insured, and then we will bill our insured for those costs. Now, that's on a paid loss basis. Now, some companies, and one of the nuances you want to check if you're a company considering a deductible is whether it's an incurred loss program or a paid loss program. So some companies will use an incurred loss program, meaning if they put up a reserve of $100,000 on a claim, let's say, they want to be reimbursed by $100,000 when they put their reserve up.

Now, our programs don't tend to work out where our programs are going to be paid loss programs. So that means you get to manage the cash flow if you're insured, and you only pay us on a monthly basis. So the premium that you owe for the coverage is in excess of the deductible. That's normal, right?

Because pretty simple for any 15 costs, you do the same way, but you'd also have an addition of the deductible amounts that would have to be reimbursed as well. Okay, so that's a really good distinction for businesses to be aware of is, is it a paid loss deductible or an incurred loss deductible? And how does that work? I also want paid loss deductible.

I mean, I just hope there are a few programs out there incurred, and what I would just caution people to think about is the cash flow implications of that, because there is a cost, right? I mean, sure, interest rates are really low right now, but most companies want to limit their cash as long as possible. So an incurred loss program, you have to power back that cash more quickly, which is also a reason why a guaranteed cost policy may not be as attractive to a large insurance trying to manage your capital, right? Because losses are going to be paid over a long period of time, whereas premiums kind of owed earlier on.

So if you're on a GC program, they're going to get all your premium in one year. If you're on some kind of deductible program, it could be paid over many years. So that's just something else to think about. It's a way to manage capital.

Sure. So, Rob, within a claim, there's generally three buckets of costs. There's medical costs, there's indemnity costs, which are like the wages for the injured worker, and then there's expenses. Are all three of those a part of your deductible charge if you're a business owner?

Well, it depends, right? So let's just talk about large deductibles for a minute, because the small ones, you don't really distinguish too much between those components, because if you're like $5,000 or something like on a deductible, that's your deductible size, let's say, it is going to be both the loss, the expenses are going to be kind of put together in that $5,000 deductible. What you'll see on a larger deductible policy, though, sometimes will be what's called a loss-inverging factor. So rather than have expenses that are paid for, like, as they occur, the LCF is applied to the amount of the loss, and that's actually reimbursed to the insurer.

So that's going to be a little support for people, because it will also lower your upfront premium as well, although they tend to be somewhat more effective in terms of cash flow management as well. But the LCF will simplify the program. The downside of the LCF is that if you have a lot of losses, the LCF is going to accumulate on you because of that. But that would be true anyway if you were paying the expenses directly.

Right. Okay. Now, you might have mentioned a little bit of this earlier, Rob. When does the actual liability for the claim go away for the business owner?

Is it when the claim is closed? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the issues, right? Because I think we're going to talk a little bit about LLCs and how to protect the credit risk of the insurer, the insurer must protect the credit risk, obviously. But, yeah, the downside of a deductible program is that you could be paying out on claims for a particular policy or for a long time, right?

So that could go on for many, many years. I mean, we're confident this is open for a long time. So that's the downside of it. The other downside of it is if you had to put up an LLC, then the insurer is going to want to keep that LLC at a certain level over some period of time based on the level of activity you've actually had, and then they make an estimate of how much you need to keep on hand for the LLC.

So that's kind of the part of having a deductible program that needs to be factored in to the cost, which is the cost of maintaining an LLC, you know, that kind of thing. Okay, since we jumped into the LLC, that was a question coming up for me, but let's talk about that, Rob. In the instances where a letter of credit, the LLC is required, how does that work for the business owner? What does that look like to them?

Right, so normally, for us, anyway, we generally don't require LLCs on smaller deductible policies. So on a $5,000, $200 deductible policy, we're probably not going to require any collateral. If you get to the larger deductibles where the credit is more, then you'll start getting to LLC requirements. If you have excellent financials and you're quite profitable, you may find that the amount of LLC that work requires a lot less.

But if you're a company, let's say, is in, you know, just coming out of bankruptcy or you have some payment distribution issues or whatever, you might see that the LLC requirement is higher. So what that would look like for a company's point with the deductible program is that they're going to have to go and secure an LLC from the bank, right? And most people have the ability to do that. In some cases, we have questions about, well, we don't really want to put an LLC because it's already feeding into our ability to borrow more money from the bank because we're having to tie up this money in LLC, right?

So that is the other aspect of a deductible program that needs to be considered. So the amount of the LLC really varies. It's not as standardized. If your premium's X, the LLC is Y.

Let me give you an example. Let's just say that you have a million dollar policy and you've got a $100,000 deductible. And let's just say the credit for that is 30%. So what ends up happening then is you've got $700,000 in premium now and $300,000 in credit, right, basically, which comes up.

The LLC will be basically the amount of credit generally that we're giving. So if it's $300,000 credit, your LLC, if you're really good credit quality, may be as low as $100,000, $150,000, but if you have issues, you can be above $300,000, right? So make sure that we've got plenty of security in the event that there's a problem with payment or whatever, those losses that we pay for. So it is based on the amount of the deductible credit.

That's kind of where we start. I see. So let's play this out. You're a business.

You've entertained that option. You're into the year. The year comes to an end. And now you start another year and you stay on the deductible program.

What happens with the LLC at that point? Now, this is where people start getting the stacking of the LLC issue. And I'll tell you that, speaking from personally, our own work is how we buy for our own employees is on a large deductible program. And it's interesting because we are LLC, even though we're virtually double plus, and I don't know if you can really question the credit quality of a lot of carriers that are going to be out getting insurance policy.

Certainly, you know, for sure, I don't really worry too much about our credit quality. And we're still required to put up an LLC. And in fact, when we changed carriers this year, we were required to leave up the LLC with the departing carrier and put up a new LLC with the carrier we're bringing in, which is also another consideration for a company when they're thinking about, well, do we want to change carriers? Do we want to save the current carrier?

Generally, we're going to get better terms. I shouldn't say this because I want to write some of these. They're maybe losing today. But sometimes it's better to save the company the year on in terms of the LLC.

Now, we ended up moving ourselves this year to a different company because we were concerned about the claims handling, et cetera, and we thought we were going to get better claims handling from this other company. So we moved, right? And I can move back to a company that we've been with before. And so it just depends on the situation.

But that's just one of the considerations that you want to think about is kind of stacking the LLCs is an issue for a lot of companies. And that's one reason why we'll see companies say, especially in the soft market like right now, they'll say, well, we've been on a 250 deductible or whatever, and now we want to go to GC because we don't want any, our LLCs are getting too big and we want to try to mitigate those. So that's something we'll see quite a bit in this kind of market. And at some point, the LLC has either returned or moved forward.

So it's not indefinitely. The way that we do it, I've noticed that sometimes it's going to be somewhat punitive when a company leaves. Let's just say you've been insured with Berkshire for three years. You've got a 250 deductible, an LLC, $2 million.

What we noticed is that this happened was actually, when we left the company, they didn't reduce our LLC, even though a lot of clients are already paid out. So what we kind of do is we'll look at it from an actual standpoint and say, well, you know, there are 10 claims still open. You know, they could go to this amount and that means we've got this much exposure to deductible reimbursement and that's going to set our LLC requirement, right? And so we try not to be punitive in terms of when people leave, but it's going to be based on the credit quality of the insurance.

And it's all over the place, which you know, especially now when people within black companies have a little stranger in the pandemic and things. And so the credit quality is something that we can take a look at pretty closely. Good, brother. That's a really healthy conversation.

I'm sure one that business is entertaining. That's something they're going to want to really talk through and make sure that they understand all the ins and outs. So thanks for sharing all of that. I have another question that pops to mind that maybe a business would be considering out there.

So Rob, if somebody chooses to put an aggregate on their deductible layer, would there be a charge back for that? Usually would that be in a, like a fewer discounts in the premium? Right. It's going to depend on where someone wants the aggregate place.

So if the aggregate is going to be very close to where the expected losses are within the layer, then there's going to be probably a charge for it, right? It's way above where we think the area is, let's say, you know, twice what we think the expected losses are within the deductible layer, the charge is going to be really nominal generally. So a lot of companies really want to manage their downside, you might call it there, right? So they want to put the aggregate at a level that is reasonable for them so that they don't have a blowout year that could actually hurt them as a going concern.

So those will be priced accordingly, right? And it's done, you know, it's all done very accurately and based on our estimates of what we think the default loss is for that particular insured, what we think the expectation is for losses within their deductible layer. And that'll obviously vary by what level they take. If they take $100,000 or a million, I mean, obviously that's going to have a difference on what they've had to do with it.

Yeah, that opens up another question for me that popped in my head as you were saying that. I'm talking about the level of management commitment and their involvement. Do you see that as being a crucial to a successful deductible program? The more engaged the owners of the business are, the safety program is, that's more likely they're going to have success.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mentioned earlier that companies want to get large enough in particular, the size is actually important in terms of how sophisticated the customer is going to be with a deductible, but absolutely. I mean, if management is committed to a positive safety culture, let's say they've got a safety director, a nurse manager, who's evaluated on how the workers' health plans come in, let's say, right? I mean, you want evaluation metrics that individual has in their company.

That's usually a good situation for everybody, right, in terms of the deductible policy, because we're going to give good terms, the company is trying to lower its cost. I mean, we've got some studies that have shown that companies where when they go into a deductible, generally their experience improves. We're seeing it's real, right? It's not just a premium check that they write every month that goes to somebody.

It's not a guaranteed cost program. That's how it works, right? But with a deductible, it's like every loss they see that they get, they see, and they know they're going to have to pay on that. And so it kind of creates a better safety culture, but it's not for everybody.

But I think for some companies that are concerned about that, it can work really well. Yeah, I think over my 30-plus years in the industry, the clients that I've had on deductible programs, I think 100% of them have seen improved losses moving forward, just simply because they're engaged, they're invested, and they realize the discount up front, the money's in their pocket, and if they have no claims, it stays in their pocket. So I want to share a story with you, because I agree with you entirely. It kind of goes back to, like I'm just saying, you are buying experience, right?

And we're an insurance company that sells these things, but when we first dig our toe into the deductible world of people, we used to buy 20% cost policies, and then one day we can kind of look at it, you know, our experience is improving, you know, it's time for me to take on risk. We started out, like, at a lower deductible, and we increased it over time, because we want to get comfortable. So what you'll see a lot of companies will do, is their first job deductible may not be a million-dollar deductible, right? It may be $100,000, or $25,000, or $50,000, or whatever, and they might over time ratchet that up as they become more comfortable with the process of deductible.

So it's not, you know, you don't need to, like, if both people are, you're going to get $150,000, and they go on and on. So they reach the point where they're really, really comfortable. So let's spend a minute, because I think there's large companies out there that deductibles are things they've considered, maybe they've been on, and maybe they're on now, but there's a whole slew of businesses in California in particular that are kind of not million-dollar premiums, but maybe $300,000, $500,000, $500,000, that really haven't thought of themselves as deductible candidates. So let's talk a little bit more about that intermediate range, that $10,000 to $75,000, and how you feel that might fit in the marketplace in California.

So let me give you a little history. We developed the mid-range deductibles, which is what you're describing. So we'll say between $10,000 and $100,000, $75,000. It always is during a stock market as we develop new products and processes and things, because you started the right business, and so we're trying to retool for the next market that's going to be a little bit more favorable.

But we developed this mid-range deductible, because we didn't see a lot of it in the marketplace. And it's kind of speaking to what you're talking about, which is like, in a mid-range provides companies with the ability to share risk. They can lower their upfront costs. They can share risk.

If they think they're in an improving environment in terms of their losses, right, you would want to be in a deductible program because you're probably going to need more credit than you are, you know, the losses you're going to pay within your layer. So I actually love the mid-range deductibles, personally, because I think they're a nice, like, it's kind of like training wheels on a bicycle, right? Like, you know, if you start with those, then you get comfortable, you might go to a higher deductible, which you're going to need to go to that level. But there's also the advantage of, like, a $10,000 deductible for us, and even occasionally $25,000 will do this if the credit quality is really good, is there where there's an LLC.

And so you kind of get the advantage of the deductible program, but you won't have to pay the LLC, which would be really an advantage. Yeah, and again, that's a nice transition away from guaranteed cost, just to, like you said, put the training wheels on the bike and give it a go. If there's a business owner out now and they're listening to this, maybe a question that's popping into mind is, my plate's already pretty full. Is there a lot more work for me in a deductible program that if I'm on guaranteed cost?

What do you think about that? No, other than I think it's human nature that if you're on risk, you're going to think about it more, right? So in terms of physically, there's not a lot. I mean, in terms of the actual process, there's not a lot for the company to do.

Other than you'll have your premium payment, you'll get a statement that will say, these are the charges that we paid this month on the claims that we're doing your deductible. This is what we need to be reimbursed based on that, right? I guess there's a level of oversight that you would want to have, probably, to look at those charges, make sure that they're reasonably agreed with them. But I mean, once you start taking the bigger deductibles, certainly, you're going to want to have a level of oversight, there's not any more work on the part of the company.

We're still managing the claims, right? So, you know, you do there, you know, then you want to review what we're doing. It's a little bit more because you're paying for those. So I would say this really after the company, I mean, it varies by customer.

I mean, some of our customers are very involved in, you know, the claims of education process. They want to know what's going on with every single one, pressure of every paying some of the bills, that kind of thing. Others are a much more hands-off. They just get their bill every month.

They get a premium bill, they get their deductible bill, they pay them, and they move on. So it really depends on my client. So, Rob, we're coming to the end here, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to just like overall, your deductible programs, how do they differ in your view, one or two or three ways from the marketplace in general, would you say? You're right, my secret's off.

No, I mean, I'll say that I think there's a general overarching principle that we have, which I guess it probably goes, maybe I'm not a very smart guy, so I just like to keep it simple. So my whole thing is, like, we want to keep our program simple and we want them to be transparent. So our first experience in the deductible world was, I'm just going to be honest, it was negative. And it was negative because there were a lot of hidden charges that we were not expecting to come through.

And that was on us, but I didn't know what it was, right? But at the same time, it's like, what would it be like for a construction company who's going to do a deductible program? They're not going to understand somebody who wants to do this, right? So it's going to be for the broker to determine every deductible program is a little bit different, right?

It could be mean, we try to streamline it as much as possible. So we don't have like a lot of add-on fees, like every time you do this and you have this fee, or every time this happens to get this fee. Try to make a little bit more transparent. So it's like, you will be able to estimate better as a customer up front.

We'll be able to help them, right? So to the broker, this is where you're adding value, right? To them is you look at the broker and say, well, this is the virtual program. This is the company X program, deductible program.

This is what you're expecting to be an advertiser, and this is your expected to be a company X program. And the reason you have to do it that way is because our terms may be very different between these two. And a lot of companies will try to, a lot of our competition will try to get as low up front premium as they can, because that's oftentimes as far as anybody gets, right? So like if you're at $350 and we're at $400, let's say, virtual, you're too expensive.

It's like, yeah, but we don't have maybe about $50,000 or more in costing you're going to pay incrementally as the losses come in because they've got these hidden charges that we don't have, right? And I say hidden, not really hidden, but their charges are not hidden. They're still out. It's just the way the structure is different.

So what you'll find is that some of the programs are set up so that if you have no claims, you might be better with company X, but if you have a lot of claims, you might be better with company Y. So it depends on how they're charging for the loss of adjustment expenses, that kind of thing, in the program. Those are great points that you're bringing out, and it falls onto the broker community. They're going to represent those products they need to really educate themselves in.

It is not an expert by training, which I guess I'm probably recovered from that career now, but I can tell you that even as somebody who has spent a lot of time being very analytical in their job, some of these programs are kind of complicated. So I kind of feel for brokers because they'll get these term sheets that are pretty long and kind of trying to go through it, and you're trying to evaluate broker against you in another company. You're saying, gosh, it's just like we're in Chinese, and Japanese are just different. You know, just don't care.

They look kind of similar, but they're different. And so I think that's just a real challenge for companies, and my recommendation there is to ask the carriers for as much visibility into all the costs that you can to get as close to apples to apples as possible, because we find a lot of time we lose out on an account that we actually were cheaper on, but the way that the thing was structured, the way the broker presented it, it didn't look that way, right? But it's just like what the things are structured. So you have to be cognizant of that.

Yeah, the other thing I think really, what you mentioned earlier, is the transparency. It's really great because you're not trying to dig through pages and pages of information to try to find the things that are disclosed but are not apparent. Our experience with you and your company, Rob, is very transparent. And the other thing that I would encourage the businesses out there to do, along with their broker, is to engage the meeting with the carrier in attendance, so that the carrier who knows their product better than anyone can help decipher the differences in the programs and make sure that you're an educated buyer, not just, as you said earlier, if that's the lower premium and they're both deductible programs, I'll just go with the lower premium.

It might be the right decision, but it might not. Whatever I do know, when we have the opportunity, we love to get in front of customers to describe not a little program or services and that kind of thing. There's one area that's really important, which is claims management, right? You want to make darn sure that that insurance company is mitigating costs as much as possible because you're paying for it now.

So they're basically paying for your paying for it. So they kick the tires pretty hard on what the claim management practices are in that company. Make sure you understand where their case looks, how experienced are their adjusters, what is their policy about trying to close claims? Are we trying to close them quickly or not?

I think there's a lot of dimensions to, I think, the claims education process and management process that can really make the difference between a successful deductible program and when it's not successful. So I really encourage that. That's just something that we spend a lot of time and money on, obviously, on claims management, as you know. But I think if we're in a deductible program, that partnership is really important for a company to understand.

That's probably a great place to end today. We could go on and talk about this all day and maybe come back to you in a few months and we'll kind of give an update on deductibles. But I think paying attention to who's handling that layer for you as a business and how well that's going to be done is critical to choosing the right partner going forward in a deductible program. One thing, Dave, just on that, is that some companies will occasionally ask us, can we use a self-insurance, let's say, and we're going to a deductible program with us.

And they'll say, well, we've been using the CPA for the last 10 years before we've been administrator. For the last 10 years, can we continue to use them? And the answer is no for us. Because we have a general philosophy that we make mistakes like everybody does, right?

We're not perfect, but we spend a lot of effort in trying to be very good at it. And so I'm not saying the TPAs don't. It's just they get a different motivation of us, right? They're just managing clients.

I mean, it actually affects our bottom line when we don't manage them well. So we've got us to make sure we manage them well, which means that that vested interest plays well with your customers who go into a deductible because we're now aligned. We want to manage the cost just as much as they do. And so there's a nice sort of symbiotic relationship there.

And you wouldn't have that as much with a TPA. So I just want to add that little point. Yeah, no, that's a great point. That's a great point.

Well, listen, Rob, I want to thank you again so much for your time today and helping all of us get a better idea of how deductible workers' compensation works and when and maybe if it's the right option for a business to consider. So, Rob, thanks for joining me again today. Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity. It's always fun to sit down and talk to you about insurance.

I'm probably worried for everybody else, but if you're not, we might be interested. So I get further nerds in the room. I don't know what that says about us, but you're right. I think we're really worried people.

Yeah, exactly. So, listen, everyone, thank you for joining me today and tuning in to Studio One and our Safety and Risk Management Network. Until next time, stay well. This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa.

Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by Studio One. For more information, visit us at rancho mesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

No similar episodes found.

No similar podcasts found.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ Safety and Risk Management Network?

This episode is 32 minutes long.

When was this Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ Safety and Risk Management Network episode published?

This episode was published on March 16, 2021.

Can I download this Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ Safety and Risk Management Network episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.
URL copied to clipboard!