IF YOU have a workers compensation book of business, a larger broker may try to take away your biggest accounts at one time or another. One of the key selling points of regional and national brokers is that they have in-house claims experts–a "claims guru"–who can attend claim-review meetings with their clients. Your competition will assure your client–who may be nervously looking at a high experience modifier and rising premiums–that as soon as they sign a broker of record letter, they will have a claims expert at their side–an expert who will be their pit bull, beating the insurance adjuster into submission and obtaining big reserve reductions that you could not get for them.

What do you do if your agency can't afford a full time workers comp claims expert, or even the services of a consultant to attend claim reviews with your largest clients? While there are a number of things you can do to solidify your hold on your plum accounts, there is one all-important service that will most improve your chances of fending off the competition. Unless your client is self-insured, you must have what is called a unit stat claim review meeting with the carrier–at the right time and with the right participants.

Midsize and large workers compensation accounts usually are experience rated, with their past performance affecting future rates. You probably know that a key to retaining such an account is to ensure its experience modification factor is kept as low as possible. The major brokers look for prospects with high experience mods, so simply keeping that number below 1.00 will get you a long way toward renewing your account. But even a high ex-mod generally won't cost you a client, if you've done all you could to help. That's where the unit stat claim review meeting comes in. While taking part in such a meeting may seem daunting, don't let a lack of claims experience intimidate you. The truth is, many of the major brokers' so-called experts haven't handled a claim file in years–if at all. But they know the questions to ask and, most important, the deadlines to hit. My hope is that after reading this article, so will you.