Guess the Contractor: Only One Received Retro Refund Every Single Year
AGC Retro members met across the state to celebrate gross refunds to date of $121 million. At the Seattle area meeting Lease Crutcher Lewis received special recognition for being the one company in the AGC Retro plan that has received refunds every single year since the beginning.
“The group now is nearly $40 million – it was $4.6 million in the first year – and has produced an average refund to members of nearly 60% over the years” said Van Hardy longtime Retro Chairman.
“This year we are once again top performers posting a group refund 4-7% higher than most competing plans with members achieving close to 50 percent refunds for the 11th time in 15 years” said Lauren Gubbe Administrator for the AGC Program. “These are impressive results given Labor and Industries’ (L&I) changes to Retro that reduce the refund and as 83% of our members are paying less than average rates into the system to offset the claims costs in the premium refund equation. This is one of several reasons we give awards to members on their experience modification rate (EMR) performance and not just solely on their refund performance. It can be more challenging to achieve the higher refunds when a firm’s rates become really low. Less in less back so to speak.”
That said some AGC Group Retro members with the lowest rates are still achieving top performer refund awards based on their serious investment in safety (maybe paying more for safety glasses that a person will really wear) as well as keeping people on salary longer than what is required while accommodating them with light duty work until they transition back to full duty.
Gubbe attributes the consistency of refund performance to members’ ongoing efforts to create a safety culture on their jobsites their investments in safety and light duty accommodation in conjunction with keeping people on salary as well as AGC stringent underwriting. “Every year we have to say no to companies who apply and every year we have had to disqualify companies from the plan who have already been on notice for performance but this is important to protecting the integrity of the group pool” said Gubbe “As far as I know we are the only plan with underwriting requiring Safety Team® qualification and that companies be in business for three years with two years of positive premium to loss results.”
The actual money distributed this year (half on June 7 and half on July 8) was based on two periods for which the Department had already reduced refunds by several million dollars in order to recoup some of what they overpaid in the past due to their longstanding refund calculation error.
Although AGC Retro staff reduced claims costs by $3.8 million in the last two tracked months AGC Group Retro had more overall added costs since last year on these two plan years. This was disappointing and on the heels of last year when the final refund was increased nearly $500000 and two-thirds of members had 60% refunds and a quarter had 70%. “The good news is that the Department owes us money on both of these periods from last year’s protests and we are protesting more claims this year as well. So the results for these plan years are not really final and we will be issuing more refunds on these years in the future” Gubbe said.
| Award Winners: |
| Top EMR’s in the Group: (Under .6 -which means these firms pay rates that are at least 40% better than average) |
| Seattle District: |
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| Northern District: |
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| Southern District: |
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| Spokane: |
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| Companies at or near .6 in the Claims Free Discount Program for achieving 3 years with out a timeloss or impairment claim |
| Southern District: |
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| Seattle District: |
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| Northern District: |
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| Central District: |
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| Spokane: |
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| Refunds from Plan Year 1 thru 15… |
| “And then there was one…”: |
| Lease Crutcher Lewis received special recognition for being the one company in the AGC Retro plan that has received refunds every single year since the beginning. Though we have many companies who have had refunds every year since being here Lewis holds the distinction for being the only firm that has done so from our first year for 15 continuous years! |
| Top Performer Refund Awards: |
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