Modification Factor

Reduce your experience modification factor and reduce your premium.

Your Experience Modification Factor

The EMF is sort of like a credit score for a business. It is based on your workers' compensation claims experience. Insurance companies use your EMF to determine your premium. Unfortunately, most businesses are unaware that they can make strategic decisions to lower their EMF and therefore reduce their insurance premiums.

Your Advocate

To control your EMF, it is important and sometimes difficult to get highly skilled and unbiased advice. No one is more committed to giving you expert, unbiased advice than Blue Ridge Risk Services. We are The Employers' Advocate and we will only charge you a fee for our services if we help save you money.

Our experts can help you:

Reduce and control your EMF and therefore reduce and control your premium

Resolve all open claims to reflect true costs prior to an upcoming renewal

Reasonably project your upcoming renewal as far as six months in advance

Verify that your EMF was calculated correctly. Errors are very common in EMF calculation. We know how to identify and correct these errors to reduce the cost of your premium

Implement our Workers' Comp Plus Program to reduce and control your EMF

Calculating your Experience Modification Factor

The guidelines for calculating your EMF have a greater effect on the cost of your premium than the actual calculation. We highly recommend that you keep the following guidelines in mind when managing your Workers' Compensation Program.

EMF Calculation Guidelines:

The data used to calculate the EMF, for most employers, is taken from three policy years and the most current year is not used. For renewals in 2005, the EMF is based upon data that applies to years 2003,2002 & 2001.

The EMF for each employer is developed by comparing the data for each company against all companies that are within the same group.

Employers that have a MOD above a 1.00 are above the average of their industry. Employers that have an EMF below 1.00 are better than their industry average.

The EMF is a key factor in determining your premium. An EMF of 1.10 will result in a 10% premium charge whereas an EMF of .90 will result in a premium credit of 10%.

Some of the factors used to calculate the EMF are payroll, class codes, and claim losses.

The EMF is based upon recorded claims data (paid & reserves cost) that is on the claim file six months before the renewal date.

Employers with a high frequency of claims will be penalized greater than employers who have a single severe loss.

For more information

If you would like additional information on your EMF, contact us. We can help you control and lower your EMF. If you would like more detailed information of the calculation process, we invite you to contact the National Council on Compensation.