Criteria
To participate in group-experience rating, you must meet the following criteria:

• Be current on all undisputed premiums, administrative costs, assessments, fines or monies otherwise due to BWC;
• More specifically, you must be current, not more than 45 days past the due date on any and all amounts due BWC, by the group-rating application deadline. The only exception is if you submit in writing a dispute of the obligation to BWC's Adjudicating Committee detailing the reason for objection and supporting documentation.
• Be current on the payment schedule for any scheduled part-pay agreement you've entered into to pay premiums or assessments otherwise due BWC as of the application deadline;
• Not have cumulative lapses in workers' compensation coverage of 59 days in the past 18 months preceding the application deadline;
  Note: Beginning Jan. 1, 2010, for public employer taxing district groups and July 1, 2010, for private employer groups, employers cannot have cumulative lapses in workers’ compensation of 40 days in the past 12 months preceding the application deadline.
• Not be a member of more than one group. If you apply for more than one group on a valid group-experience-rating application, BWC will reject you for all groups.
• Third-party administrators must submit a list of employers who are members of each group to BWC by the required application deadline.
• The employers within the group must be businesses that are substantially similar.
• Each sponsoring organization’s group program must substantially improve accident prevention and claims handling. The sponsoring organization must document improvement.
• The group must consist of at least 100 individual employers, or the combined premiums of the employers must exceed $150,000.

Once you meet that criteria, apply for group-experience rating through a trade association or other organization of which you are member.

Group criteria
Groups must demonstrate a common purpose and possess proven results from safety and loss-control practices. This helps confirm that the group's loss experience will differ from an individual employer's experience.

BWC adjusts rates for groups that use experience-rating credibility tables appropriate to the employers taken as if the group was one big company. The group-experience-rating plan is an annual plan for the rating of a policy year.

Largest possible discount and average discount statistics
The maximum possible discount an employer in the group-experience-rating program may receive for the July 1, 2010, policy year is 51 percent. You may see marketing materials that reference a higher discount, such as 65 percent. Discounts this large are not possible in the group-rating program.

Not only is this discount unattainable, but marketing this discount is a violation of Ohio law. BWC may take action against a sponsoring association that provides inaccurate quotes. Should you receive any copies of materials that provide discounts exceeding 51 percent, please fax them to 614-621-5799.

Group-experience-rating sponsors
There are two types of state-fund employers eligible for group-experience rating, private and public. Private employers are private sector companies or organizations, and public employers are government entities: cities, counties, townships, schools, etc. Click on one of the links below to see your list of group-rating sponsors.

Group-experience-rating sponsor list: Private employer

Group-experience-rating sponsor list: Public employer

Program deadlines for private and public employers
For private employers, BWC must receive applications from the group sponsors by the last business day in February of the rating year for which they are applying. Example: BWC must receive the applications from the group sponsors for the 2011 rating year (July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011) by Feb. 26, 2010.

For public employers, BWC must receive applications from the group sponsors by the last Friday in August of the year immediately before the rating year for which they are applying. Example: BWC must receive the applications from the group sponsors for the 2011 rating year (Jan. 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2011) by Aug. 27, 2010.