Ohio BWC will be making some changes for the 2024 policy year (beginning 7/1/24), some of which may have a small advantage for certain policyholders. 

Employers will still be subsidizing BWC’s administrative fund as they always have, but House Budget Bill 31 will change how the money is accounted for. Right now, state fund employers are paying base rates plus 29.01%, and that percentage is an administrative fee that goes into the fund. In the future, the admin fee will be fully baked into the base rates, resulting in rates that are roughly 20% higher. All told, employers shouldn’t see a huge difference in amounts paid to BWC. This will apply to both public and private employers, beginning on their respective 2024 policy year start dates.  

Another change will allow for potentially better refunds from post-policy year savings programs, like Group Retro, Safety Council, etc. In prior years, those rebates were calculated based on a percentage of “standard premium” – in other words, premiums before BWC’s 29% admin fee was tacked on. If an employer paid $50,000 in annual premium to BWC, only $35,500 if it was counted as premium that they’d be rebated on. Program credits and refunds will begin using full premium in 2024, instead of peeling off the administrative portion of premium when calculating refunds and credits. 

The premium dollars going into Retro consortiums will still exclude Premium Size Factor Reductions. This is a sliding scale discount for credit-rated employers not enrolled in Group Rating, with more than $5,000 in annual premium. BWC implemented this in the 2019 policy year, and while it did reduce annual premiums for some – it also substantially decreased the amount of money going into Group Retro pools. This was a factor in the dwindling Group Retro refunds we’ve discussed (less money in = less money out), but a bigger contributing factor to Retro’s nosedive was BWC’s move to utilizing ACES to calculate claims reserves. There have been some minor adjustments to that system as well, and all of this bodes well for Group Retro partcipants. 

For those that have benefitted from the Premium Size Factor Reduction (available to employers with over $5K in annual premium that are not in Group Rating) – don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere. There will be some minor tweaks to the percentages used for the sliding scale, but nothing to sound an alarm over. If you have questions about these changes and how they will impact your Ohio BWC policy, please reach out to your client services manager.