WVFA Spring 2019

www.wvfa.org Spring 2019 |  West Virginia Forestry Association Mountain State Forestry 5 I t has been over a decade since the promise of Workers’ Compensation (WC) insurance relief was anticipated for the logging industry in West Virginia. Unfortunately, the transition from a State run program to the private insurance market did not result in lower rates for loggers, even though most other industries did see significant benefits. In fact, many loggers have seen their rates increase, many of whom have been forced into the Assigned Risk Pool. As a result, the West Virginia Forestry Association has been exploring a variety of WC options over the last 3+ years. Many of the options we explored simply ended up as dead ends. However, in the last few months we have been able to engage with an insurance broker out of Bristol, TN, Nash & Powers, to offer WV loggers a competitive WC rate option. This option has three basic requirements for prequalification: 1) the logging company must provide 3 years of claims history (loss runs), 2) carry a minimum payroll of $100,000, and 3) have an Experience Modification Factor less than 1.25. An additional requirement is that the logging company must be a member of the West Virginia Forestry Association if Nash & Powers writes them a WC policy. In order to test the waters of this new option, the Chairman of the WV Loggers Council, Bill Robinson, has worked with the Nash & Powers agent to secure a WC policy quote for his logging business. The annual cost of Bill’s current WC policy is $47,000, which does not include Mandolidis coverage (additional insurance to cover any lawsuits that would originate outside WC coverage—a circumstance unique to WV). The quote secured by Nash & Powers for Robinson Logging was $25,000, which does include Mandolodis coverage—amounting to a significant 47 percent reduction in annual premium (and more than 50 percent if Mandolidis coverage is not included in the Nash & Powers quote). It is important to note that Robinson Logging is non-mechanized. The annual premium for a mechanized logging company, with similar claims history, payroll, and experience modification factor can expect an even lower annual premium. Nash & Powers currently has two companies offering workers comp coverage to mechanized operations, with one of those companies also offering coverage to non-mechanized operations. For those loggers that do not meet the basic requirements above for securing a WC policy through Nash & Powers, WVFA is working on an additional option that we hope will become available later this year. More information on this will be forthcoming in the Weekly Update and future issues of this magazine. If you are interested in exploring the Nash & Powers option for WC coverage, please contact the WVFA office at 681.265.5019 for more information. Curt Hassler Board President “For those loggers that do not meet the basic requirements above for securing a WC policy through Nash & Powers, WVFA is working on an additional option that we hope will become available later this year. More information on this will be forthcoming in the Weekly Update and future issues of this magazine.” M E S S A G E F R OM T H E P R E S I D E N T