Premium Audit Bill - A Call To Action - Five Things To Do
I am going to let everyone in on a little secret
. Where does most of our employer premium audit business come from overall? We very often receive emails and phone calls from employer that have overdue premium audit bills and want to reduce the bill. Our other main source of business is when the business owner or risk manager basically feels that there is something wrong.
A business will lose some of its leverage when it does two things. The first is to just pay what the premium auditor has calculated. The second one is to sit on the bill and not doing anything about it. A bill that was paid without a review or a bill that is now overdue makes the premium audit review process of employers much more tedious and complicated.
The five things that a business should do when you receive a Workers Comp audit bill are:
1. Look over the premium auditor's worksheets if available. There will usually be a breakdown of how your company was audited.
2. Call or write the auditor to ask how they came up with their numbers if any part of the audit does not look correct to you. The auditor is bound by state Workers Comp insurance laws to respond to you.
3. If you still disagree with the auditor's assessments, then you have the right to dispute them. Most insurance company premium bills say that you have only ten days. The state insurance laws usually differ and allow you a longer amount of time to dispute the bill. However, a Workers Compensation policy is a contract. In other words, there is a grey area there. The bottom line is that you are on a time clock to respond to the bill. It is best to not use the dispute process as a way to delay paying a bill. All this will do is ruin the business relationship you have with your insurance carrier and agent.
4. If for some reason, you are unable to pay the premium audit bill, contact your insurance carrier immediately. Most insurance carrier collection departments will try to work something out with you. This may not apply to all insurance carriers. Making the first contact is much better than trying to work something out with an overdue bill pending.
5. The bottom line is to not let the bill sit or file it away. The Workers Comp premium audit bill is a call to action to either pay it after a full review or to question the audit and to dispute any incorrect areas.