Page 17 - Louisiana 811 Magazine 2021 Issue 4

You must provide their auditor with copies of your 940s and 941s. They go over them and compare the premium you paid – based on the payrolls you estimated when you wrote the policy – against what you actually paid workers during the policy year. If you paid out more than you estimated, you will get a bill; if you paid out less than estimated, you will get a refund. Happens every year.
If you fail to comply with the request for audit information, your Workers Comp will get cancelled and you can’t get it anywhere else until you have completed that year’s audit.
The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) keeps up with all these details, and every company doing business in this country checks with NCCI before issuing a new Workers Comp policy. There simply is no way around compliance – and you must have Workers Comp insurance if you want a shot at the bigger jobs!
Let’s say you get all your insurance and bonding, put in a bid, and you get the contract. It starts out being just in
your home state, and things are fine
for a year or so. You are doing a great job, and the job now spreads over into neighboring states. Is this a problem? It CAN be!
ALL insurance companies are not licensed to do business in every state. It’s a filing process done by the company and the Insurance Commission in each state – and there are requirements, regulations and expenses involved.
So, every company is not everywhere. Double check with your agent and
make sure all your companies are filed in whichever states you might be going into. But if you didn’t check before, and might be going into a neighboring state, remember this: you can take employees from your home state with you and they would be covered – BUT you cannot hire a resident of another state if your Workers Comp carrier is not licensed in that state. There won’t be any coverage if one of them gets hurt. If an employee you brought with you from your home state gets hurt – you are covered. Not the case if you hired someone from the neighboring state and HE got hurt.
There are even states where ONLY certain Workers Comp companies
are able to be filed. You can have a company that is as big as the universe, is filed and legal to do business everywhere else on the planet – but, oops! not in these states. So sorry --
It’s a fairly good idea to keep in regular touch with your insurance agent when/if your plans expand. That agent should know which companies are good where – and remember,
rates vary between companies. If your agent didn’t put you with one of the companies that can do business in a neighboring state, it could well be that you are saving some money – which was the driver on that decision as to where to put you originally. That agent is really trying to get you the best deal – that’s how he keeps you as a customer.
But when you operate in multiple states, it’s not about the rates – it’s about the coverage. More than anything, your agents want to be sure you’re covered...because you never know.
Charlie Gauthier, Sales Representative
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2021, Issue 4 Louisiana 811 • 15