Grouping insurance for related businesses
If you have ‘related’ businesses and have combined annual wages of over $750,000, you are required to group your insurance.
Grouping your insurance should be done either when you register for your policy or as soon as you become aware that you have related businesses. Penalties may apply if you don’t group your insurance with your related businesses.
What are related businesses?
Businesses are related if they have shared ownership, control or shareholding of greater than 50%, or if they share employees between businesses.
If you need to take out a new policy for a new group member and you don’t have your workers insurance group number handy, please contact us on 13 44 22 and we’ll provide you with this number. If you do know your workers insurance group number you can take out a new policy online via the Get a Quote option.
How this affects your premium
Your premium is adjusted using the combined average performance premium (APP) of the group.
The group APP will be used to determine your employer category (average performance premium range) and claims performance adjustment rate. Where the group APP exceeds $30,000 all employers within the group, including small employers, will be experience adjusted.
It is your own claims performance that will have the greatest impact on the premium payable.
If you have nil or low claims costs and your claims performance rate is better than the NSW workers insurance scheme performance rate, using the group average performance premium in the calculation is likely to produce a lower premium than if you were not grouped.
Claims made by other group members do not impact your premiums, unless a member ceases to trade.
You are required to register for grouping within 14 days of becoming aware that you are a member of a group.
Calculating the cost of your premium
Keeping your separate policies
All members of a group continue to have separate policies, but all policies in the group must have a common renewal date. It is a legislative requirement.
If the policies don’t share a common renewal date it’s not possible to accurately calculate the premium for the group members.
The common renewal date for a group’s policies should be the renewal date of the first policy due on or after the date that the employers became related for the purposes of grouping.
This may mean that one or more of the grouped policies will be required to be short-termed to the common renewal date. Employers should contact icare for more information on how short-terming their policy will affect them.
If the first renewal date is not a suitable renewal date for the group, all group members can organise with icare to short-term their policies to the preferred common renewal date.
Employers not required to group
Grouping does not apply to employers who are:
- self insurers
- insured with specialised insurers
- government departments
- related to other employers where their combined annual wages payable to workers does not exceed $750,000
- insured where the policy of insurance relates only to private household domestic workers.
How to register as a group
Complete the grouping registration form and send it to us by email or post.
Each member of your group must also complete a Grouping registration form.
We will write to you and provide your group number and details of other registered employers in your group.
Email: premium.services@icare.nsw.gov.au
Post: Premium Services, icare workers insurance, Locked Bag 2906, Lisarow, NSW 2250.
Apply for exclusion from grouping
You can only apply to be excluded once you have registered for grouping.
Employers can apply to us to be excluded from grouping when:
- The employer is a member of a group which uses common employees,
- The employer carries on a business as a trustee and is a member of a group of commonly controlled businesses,
- The employer is a non-profit organisation conducting a business with a charitable, benevolent, philanthropic or patriotic purpose and that business is not in direct competition with any other business conducted for profit.
If an exempt employer is a related entity they are required under the Workers Compensation Act 1987 to maintain a policy and be grouped.
An Application for exclusion from grouping form can be obtained by contacting icare workers insurance on 13 44 22.
icare workers insurance will determine within 30 days whether a not-for-profit employer can be excluded from a group.