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The New South Wales (NSW) Government has introduced significant reforms to the workers’ compensation system through iCare. These changes aim to strengthen financial sustainability, improve support for injured workers, and align compensation with modern workplace realities.
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The Christmas – New Year period has historically proven to be a busy period for workers compensation. Due to a variety of reasons, we see a higher frequency of claims during this period. Last December and just before Christmas break / public holidays, one of our clients had a psychological claim lodged against them. The worker had been terminated two weeks prior to the claim being lodged.
A NSW Parliamentary review of Workers Compensation Scheme has been released providing recommendations to improve the NSW scheme. The report revealed the scheme is $1.87B in surplus, claims have reduced materially (110,000 in 2011/12 to 60,000 in 2015/16).
With continued market speculation, earlier today it has been confirmed that CGU will exit the NSW workers compensation scheme when their agency agreement with icare expires at the end of 2017.
Per our previous articles and as recently as our February 2017 Update, it was expected that the current 5 agents (Allianz, CGU, EML, GIO & QBE) would reduce to 3 agents for 2018.
With the announcement of CGU’s decision to exit the scheme questions will be asked as to if icare will be happy with 4 agents at approximately 45% market share or if they will pursue the anticipated reduction to 3 agents.
icare recently held NSW briefing sessions to update consultants / brokers on the upcoming changes regarding the insourcing of premium & credit/payment functions from insurers. A phased approach is hoped to facilitate a smooth transition. In the next few weeks the new portal will be launched for new business only, this is for new companies taking out a policy for the first time. The next major phase of change is currently scheduled for April, where all client renewals will be managed through icare for the financial year 2017-18.