Is a 5-Point Reduction in Your Experience Mod Worth the Effort?

Staffing firm owners hear a lot of advice about lowering their experience modification rate — the "mod." But chasing the mod can become an end in itself. So let's ask the practical question: if you could knock five points off your experience mod, would it actually be worth the work?

The answer is almost always yes — and the reason has less to do with the mod itself than with what it represents.

A Quick Refresher on the Experience Mod

Your experience modification rate (EMR or "mod") is a multiplier applied to your premium based on how your actual claims history compares to expected losses for firms of your size and type:

• A mod of 1.00 is average
• Below 1.00 means you've outperformed your peers — and your premium is discounted
• Above 1.00 means you've had more (or more expensive) losses than expected — and your premium is surcharged

So a mod of 1.15 means you're paying a 15% surcharge on top of manual premium. A mod of 0.90 means a 10% discount.

What 5 Points Is Actually Worth

"Five points" means moving your mod by 0.05 — say, from 1.10 to 1.05. The dollar impact is straightforward:

Premium impact = manual premium × 0.05

On a firm paying $500,000 in manual premium, five mod points is worth roughly $25,000 a year. And because the mod is a multiplier, that savings repeats every single year the improvement holds. Over a three-year experience period, the same effort compounds.

For a staffing firm running on thin margins, a recurring five-figure savings is far from trivial.

Why the Mod Is Really a Scoreboard

Here's the deeper point: you don't lower your mod by negotiating it. You lower it by reducing the frequency and severity of claims — and those same improvements help you in ways the mod doesn't even capture:

• Fewer injured workers and less disruption at host sites
• Lower claim costs under any deductible program
• A more attractive risk profile when you market your program
• Happier host employers who see you managing safety proactively

The mod is the scoreboard. The real game is claims management and loss prevention.

How the Points Come Off

Because claim frequency moves the mod even more than severity, the highest-leverage moves are:

1. Report fast — our 24-hour claims reporting keeps small injuries from snowballing
2. Manage claims actively — advocacy-based handling resolves claims 14.51% lower than predictive estimates
3. Return injured workers to modified duty quickly to control indemnity costs
4. Classify and document accurately so losses are attributed correctly

Do those things and the five points come off as a byproduct.

Worth It? Almost Always.

A five-point reduction isn't just worth the effort — it's a recurring return on work you should be doing anyway. If your mod is north of 1.00 and you're not sure why, let's pull it apart together and build a plan to bring it down.