Taking The Temperature Of Evolving Trends In Catastrophic Workers’ Comp Cases

The soft market in the workers’ compensation space might be coming to an end, even as predictions about continued strong competition in workers’ comp throughout 2018, made in the USI 2018 Insurance Market Outlook, have come to fruition. “The workers’ compensation carrier marketplace remains competitive, but there are signs that things are starting to shift. Carriers are starting to notice the downward frequency trends leveling off or even reversing, with frequency starting to tick upwards,” said Mark Walls, vice president of communications and strategic analysis at Safety National. “It is thought that this is due to the high employment rate, which results in many newer, untrained and perhaps unconditioned employees in the workforce. Those declining frequency rates are really what has been driving the rate reductions in recent years.”