While your base premium rate is set using the historical costs of injuries for your industry, you have the opportunity to earn a discount – or face a surcharge – for your own business based on how your claim costs compare to similar-sized firms in industries that share the same risk as yours.

How experience rating works

The discount or surcharge, called your experience rating adjustment, allows us to ensure the costs of compensation for people injured at work are distributed fairly. This is how we determine it:

1. We determine your claim costs for the past three years.
2. We take into account the size of your business, based on your payroll.
3. We compare your claim costs per dollar of payroll, to the industry average.

If your claims are lower than those of competitors of the same size, you can earn discounts on your base premium rates – up to 50 percent over time.

If your claims are higher than those of competitors of the same size, you may face surcharges of up to 100 percent over time.

If you move your firm’s business operations (or a significant portion or aspect of them) to an affiliated successor, your experience rating will transfer to them.

Your experience rating

Every fall, we send you a letter that shows your base premium rate, your experience rating adjustment, and your net premium rate for the coming year. If you’ve had a claim, the letter will show how it affected your experience rating. You can also view your premium rate letter online.

Improve your experience rating

Reducing the costs of claims by creating a safer and healthier workplace and helping injured workers recover can improve your experience rating and reduce the amount you pay for insurance. Here are some resources to help you do so.

Prevent injuries

The best way to reduce your insurance costs is to prevent injuries. A good first step is to develop a comprehensive workplace health and safety program.

Get data to help plan your health and safety initiatives

Our easy-to-use online planning tools and calculators show how changes you make at the workplace, can impact injury rates, claim costs, and insurance rates.

• Employer Health and Safety Planning Tool Kit: This secure application lets employers use their own data to plan targeted safety improvements and reduce costs
• Industry health and safety data: This tool provides information on prevention activities, assessment data, injury rates and claim costs, by industry and classification unit
• Dashboards: These interactive tools let you explore and understand specific health and safety topics
• Calculators: These tools help you estimate premiums and calculate the total costs of work-related injuries

Learn more by visiting our Shared Data section.

Help injured workers recover

Helping injured workers recover as soon and as safely as possible will lower your injury costs and, over time, will have a positive impact on your experience rating. Learn more about recovery and work.