NCCI, the advisory agency for 38 states and the District of Columbia, serves as a comprehensive source for all things workers compensation. As an “advisory organization”, NCCI provides rating, statistical, and advisory insight to the insurance industry. For those newer to the industry, an advisory organization such as NCCI is generally funded by insurance carriers who write workers compensation coverage. 

Founded in 1923, NCCI develops rules, rates, and forms; creates and monitors the work comp class codes; and produces experience modification worksheets (and factors). In addition to these main services, NCCI manages the residual (non-standard) workers compensation market for many states and provides cost analysis of proposed and enacted workers' compensation legislation. 

NCCI’s Transformed Learning Center 

NCCI developed a learning path specially curated for agents and brokers. “Voice of the Customer is an essential part of everything we do,” said Lisa Jarnot, Executive Director, Product Management. “We created the Agent Education learning path based on topics our agent customer group told us were most important to them. So far, the updated Learning Center has had more than 25,000 hits, and over 1,700 unique users.” 

The Learning Center can be accessed by clicking this link. Here you can explore some of these 13 topics, including: 

The topic-driven modules contain a series of short video courses that you can watch at your own pace. Each video identifies the length in minutes, and the education level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced) to tailor your learning experience. 

These modules are relatively brief and provide agents with a solid overview of the work comp system in NCCI states. While some states set their own rates – such as California, New York and monopolistic states, such as Ohio and Washington where the states are sole providers of work comp coverage – they may rely on NCCI data in that rate setting. So, even if you are not in an NCCI state, these videos can provide a strong overview of workers' compensation coverage. 

As IIABA often recommends, when you have a deeper knowledge of the work comp ins and outs, “leading with workers compensation coverage” is a solid approach for agents to build a large customer base. 

“The Learning Center is just one of the many great resources NCCI offers to workers compensation professionals, including Class Look-Up and NCCI Atlas,” said Jarnot. “Visit NCCI.com where there’s an exclusive tab for agents and brokers to find even more great resources.” 

Each States’ Workers Compensation System May Vary 

In your insured’s workers’ compensation policy in Section 3A, you’ll notice this type of wording: “Workers’ Compensation Insurance – Part One of this policy applies to the Workers’ Compensation Law of the following states: -- then goes on to list the states where coverage applies. The workers compensation systems in those states may vary. 

Each year, NCCI develops state advisory resources for each NCCI state, and the information is available on ncci.com. 

Here is a link to Arizona’s NCCI 2022 State Advisory report as an example. The main topics of these reports are as follows. 

Why should an agent read these reports? Spotting by state the major trends in the work comp industry allows agents and brokers to educate their clients on important topics such as the critical need for return-to-work programs, directing medical care by adjusters when allowed by statute, reducing frequency of claims, and other risk reduction issues.