Enroll Now: $795

Insights & Authority: The Teardown

We say 75% of
premium audits
are wrong. This is
where we prove it.

That number is not a marketing claim. It is what we have found over 25
years of pulling apart real audit statements, sitting in real disputes, and
correcting real billing errors. We put it in writing because we are willing to
show the work.

This is not a general insurance blog. We do not publish articles about the importance of 

workplace wellness programs or how to communicate with injured workers. There are 

plenty of sites for that.

 

This blog is for the technical professional who wants to understand exactly where the 

errors live, how they get made, and what the manual actually says about fixing them.

What you will find here

Audit Teardowns

Actual, anonymized audit disputes walked through line by line. Excluded remuneration that should have come off the payroll. Independent contractors that got charged as employees. Classification codes applied to the wrong operations. We name the manual section. We show the correction.

Mod Math Edge Cases

Common-ownership combinability questions that catch experienced underwriters off guard. Cancel-rewrite scenarios that shift which policies land in the Experience Rating Period. How two different rating bureaus handle the exact same injury data and why the outcomes diverge.

The Valuation Trap

Real examples of how missed valuation dates locked inflated reserves into an employer’s experience mod for three consecutive policy years. We show what the mod looked like before and after, and we show exactly what could have stopped it.

Articles

Recent teardowns

Audit Teardown

The $48,000 mistake hiding in a contractor's overtime line

An auditor charged premium on the full overtime payroll. The manual says only the straight-time portion is chargeable. We walk through the rule and the correction.
April 2026 · 11 min read

Mod Math Edge Case

Common majority ownership: when the ERM-14 should have been filed three years ago

Two LLCs, one shared owner, separate experience mods. The combinability rule was triggered the day they incorporated. Here is what happens when nobody catches it until renewal.
April 2026 · 9 min read

The Valuation Trap

An open reserve, a missed deadline, and three years of inflated mods

A serious injury, a delayed medical update, and a valuation date that came and went. The mod jumped 38 points and stayed there. Here is the timeline.
March 2026 · 14 min read

Audit Teardown

Standard Exception 8810: when "clerical" stops being clerical

The 8810 code is one of the most misapplied classifications in the manual. We pull apart three real disputes where the auditor and the agent were both wrong.
March 2026 · 10 min read

Mod Math Edge Case

California's $250 rule: why your NCCI intuition will mislead you

The WCIRB removes the first $250 from every claim before it hits the mod. NCCI does not. Here is what that does to a worksheet you might recognize.
February 2026 · 8 min read

Audit Teardown

The uninsured subcontractor invoice that hid the labor split

A drywall sub billed materials and labor on one line. The auditor charged premium on the entire amount. The manual is clear on the split. We show how to make it.
February 2026 · 12 min read
[Article archive and category filters will live here.]

Read the teardowns. Then come fix the system.

When you see the same patterns we see every week, come back and get the WCTP designation so you can start fixing them from the inside.
Enroll Now: $795 →