The workers comp renewal review checklist

Start with the Information Page: Items 3.A, 3.B and 3.C

The Information Page of the standard workers' comp policy (form WC 00 00 00 C) is where the coverage is actually defined, and it's the first thing to diff. Read it item by item against last term — a difference here is a coverage difference, full stop.

Three items carry almost all the risk, and all three change quietly because nothing about them changes the look of the declarations.

• Item 3.A — the states where you have Part One (statutory) workers' compensation coverage. A state the insured now operates in that isn't listed is an uninsured jurisdiction; a state that silently dropped off at renewal is the same exposure in reverse.
• Item 3.B — other-states insurance, which extends coverage to states not named in 3.A. Confirm the operative states are handled either in 3.A or 3.B, and that a state didn't move from a listed 3.A state to a vaguer 3.B treatment.
• Item 3.C — Part Two employers-liability limits: bodily injury by accident (each accident), by disease (policy limit), and by disease (each employee). The near-universal minimum is 100/500/100; a renewal that quietly reverts a 500/500/500 or 1M/1M/1M account to statutory minimums is a real reduction that any umbrella sitting over it will notice.
• Item 3.D — the endorsement schedule; treat any endorsement listed last term but missing this term as a finding until you've confirmed it was intentional.

Class codes, payroll and rates — the premium engine

Underneath the Information Page sits the class-code table: each classification, its estimated payroll, and its rate per $100 of payroll. This is where premium is built and where audit disputes are born. Compare the renewal table to the expiring one line by line — a code that was added, dropped, re-described or re-rated changes both the price and, at audit, the money the insured owes.

The classic finding is a governing (highest-rate) code swallowing payroll that belongs in a lower-rate clerical or outside-sales split — for example office staff that should sit in the clerical office code rather than the shop code. That's a savings conversation for the insured; the renewal review is where you catch it before another year runs on the wrong basis.

• Class codes added, removed or re-described versus the expiring policy — a changed governing code can move the whole premium.
• Manual rate per $100 payroll for each code, prior vs. renewal — rates move independently of the mod and get overlooked.
• Estimated annual payroll per code — a swing signals a re-underwrite or a classification the carrier reassigned.
• Clerical, outside-sales and standard-exception splits that carried forward, or collapsed back into the governing code.

The experience mod, and the waivers people forget

The experience-modification factor multiplies the manual premium, so a mod that moved — 0.91 last term, 1.04 this term — is one of the largest dollar changes on the policy and a signal about how the account's loss history is trending. BindCheck flags that the mod changed and by how much; it does not re-audit the NCCI worksheet or tell you the number is wrong. The mod is yours to interpret — the review's job is to make sure you actually see it moved, because on a familiar account it's easy to miss.

Then the endorsements, which is where WC agency E&O tends to live. A blanket waiver of subrogation (WC 00 03 13) or a specific/scheduled waiver (WC 00 03 01) that was present last term and absent this term can breach a contract the insured signed — the GC, landlord or customer required it, and now it's gone. A sole-proprietor/partner/officer inclusion or exclusion endorsement that flipped changes who is actually covered. Diff the whole endorsement schedule, not just the priced items.

• Experience mod factor prior vs. renewal — flagged with the delta, interpretation left to you.
• Waiver of subrogation — blanket (WC 00 03 13) or scheduled (WC 00 03 01) — present last term, missing this term.
• Sole proprietors, partners, officers and LLC members: inclusion (WC 00 03 10) or exclusion endorsements that were added, dropped or reversed.
• State-specific mandatory endorsements that changed with a state added to or removed from Item 3.A.

How BindCheck runs the WC diff for you

Reading the checklist above across two full policies by hand, at renewal volume, is exactly where things slip. Upload the expiring policy and the renewal and BindCheck extracts the Information Page items, the class-code and payroll table, the mod and the endorsement schedule from each, compares them, and returns a plain checklist of what changed — added, dropped, reduced, edition-changed or missing — with every finding cited to its source page so it goes straight in the E&O file.

The diff is deterministic: the same two documents always produce the same result, so it's a record you can stand behind, not a guess. And any carrier-drafted manuscript endorsement — the non-standard language a mechanical comparison can't safely read — is flagged for a human rather than auto-interpreted. For the full line-of-business overview, see the workers' comp solution page at /solutions/workers-comp.

Frequently asked questions