NAICO workers compensation, built around what your crews do.
Workers compensation is core business for NAICO, and construction, manufacturing, energy and service contractors are the industries it was built around. Cribb Insurance Group holds the appointment and services the account out of Bentonville.
The short version
Workers compensation pays for injuries that happen on the job, and in exchange it is normally the exclusive route an injured employee has against the employer. That trade is the whole design of the system.
The premium is not a fixed price. It is built from payroll by class code, adjusted by your own loss history, and then trued up at audit. Most of what goes wrong on a workers compensation account is a paperwork problem rather than a coverage problem, which is where an agency earns its place.
Two parts, doing two different jobs.
A workers compensation policy is not one coverage. It is a statutory benefit mechanism bolted to a liability policy, and the two halves behave differently.
Part One: statutory benefits
Pays the benefits state law requires when an employee is injured on the job: medical treatment, wage replacement during disability, and death benefits to dependents.
Part One follows the statute rather than a schedule, so there is no dollar limit written into it. Whatever the law says is owed is what the policy responds to. That is why you will not find a limit to choose on this half.
Part Two: employers liability
Responds to suits brought against the employer arising out of a workplace injury in the situations that fall outside the statutory benefit system rather than inside it.
Unlike Part One, this half carries limits and behaves like other liability coverage. It is also the half that contracts and umbrella policies care about, because an umbrella typically has to sit over a stated employers liability limit.
Workers compensation rarely stands alone on an account. It usually sits alongside general liability and commercial auto, and building them together is what keeps an injury from falling between two carriers.
Who actually has to carry it.
Arkansas does not use a single employee count. Ark. Code § 11-9-102 defines covered employment four different ways, and construction work reaches the requirement far sooner than most other businesses do.
- Three or more employees, generallyEvery employment in the state in which three or more employees are regularly employed by the same employer in the course of business, subject to the exceptions the statute lists, which include domestic service, certain work in or about a private residence, agricultural farm labor, the state and its political subdivisions, persons covered by federal law, and certain nonprofit service.
- Two or more for building workEvery employment in which two or more employees are employed by any person engaged in building or building repair work.
- One or more if you subcontractEvery employment in which one or more employees are employed by a contractor who subcontracts any part of the contract.
- One or more for a subcontractorEvery employment in which one or more employees are employed by a subcontractor.
Read those last two together and the practical result is plain: the moment a contractor farms out part of a job, the count that matters drops to one. Plenty of small operations are inside the requirement without realizing the arithmetic changed when they hired their first sub. This is general information rather than legal advice, and your contracts frequently require coverage regardless of what the statute says.
Get the certificate of noncoverage before the sub starts, not after
Under Ark. Code § 11-9-402, where a subcontractor fails to secure compensation, the prime contractor is liable for compensation to that subcontractor's employees, unless there is an intermediate subcontractor who does have coverage. The statute lets the contractor or its carrier recover from the sub afterward, and that claim becomes a lien against money owed to the sub, but the exposure lands on the prime first.
There is a specific document for the one-person sub. A sole proprietor or partners who have not elected coverage, and who deliver a current certificate of noncoverage issued by the Workers' Compensation Commission, are conclusively presumed for the term of that certificate not to be covered and not to be employees of the prime contractor. That certificate is doing real legal work, and it only works if you are holding it before the injury happens.
So the practical routine is unglamorous and it matters: certificate of insurance from every sub who has employees, certificate of noncoverage from every one-person sub, both current, both collected before anybody sets foot on the job. Send them to us and we will hold the file and tell you what is missing before your audit does.
Ark. Code § 11-9-402. General information, not legal advice.
Class codes and payroll do most of the work.
Workers compensation premium starts with what your people actually do. Every job function maps to a classification, each classification carries its own rate, and payroll is divided among them.
- The classification has to match the workNot the job title, not what the last agent put on the application, and not what is convenient. A crew doing one kind of work coded as another is a problem that surfaces at audit rather than at binding.
- Payroll is the exposure basePremium moves with payroll, so a growing crew changes the number during the term whether or not anybody tells the carrier.
- Splitting payroll needs recordsWhere an employee genuinely performs work in more than one classification, splitting the payroll usually requires records that support the split. Without them the payroll tends to land in a single classification.
- Owners and officers are their own questionWhether an owner, partner or officer is included or excluded changes both the coverage and the payroll picture, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.
We go through the classifications with you before the submission goes out. On a workers compensation account it is an hour well spent.
The experience modification follows you.
Once an account is large enough and old enough to qualify, a modification factor compares your own loss history against businesses doing the same kind of work and adjusts your premium accordingly.
It is built from past periods
The calculation uses completed policy periods rather than the current one, so it reacts slowly in both directions. A bad year keeps showing up for a while, and so does a good one.
Frequency behaves differently from severity
The formula does not treat one large loss the same way it treats several small ones. Understanding which pattern you have tells you which one is actually moving your number.
It is worth checking
The worksheet is built from data other parties file about your account, and reported values can be stale, including open claims carried at reserves that no longer reflect where the claim ended up.
Send us your worksheet and we will read it with you: which claims are driving the number, which reserves look out of date, and which of those are worth pushing on. Some contracts also ask for the factor directly, so it is worth knowing yours before somebody else asks for it.
The audit is where surprises live.
A workers compensation policy is written on estimated payroll. What you pay during the year is a deposit, and the carrier trues it up against actual payroll at the end of the term. That is normal and expected. What is not expected is what gets added to it.
Uninsured subcontractor payroll
This is the most common reason an audit comes back higher than the business expected. Payments to a sub who cannot document coverage can be treated as payroll on your policy. The paperwork routine above is what prevents it.
Records by classification
Keep payroll records organized by class code through the year rather than reconstructing them in the week the auditor calls. It is the difference between a clean audit and an argued one.
Send it to us first
Before you return an audit packet, send it to the office. We would rather find a misapplied classification or a sub whose certificate you do have while it is still a draft.
The part that lasts twelve months.
Placing the policy takes days. Servicing it takes the year, and on a workers compensation account the servicing is most of the value.
Certificates and paperwork
Certificates of insurance, waiver of subrogation requests and the subcontractor file all run through the Bentonville office. Send us the requirement rather than guessing at what the general contractor wants.
Reporting an injury
Report promptly. Delay is the thing that turns a straightforward claim into a contested one. Call the office and we will walk you through the reporting and coordinate with the carrier, or report direct if that is faster in the moment.
Loss control and underwriting
Documented practices are visible to underwriters, and what a carrier sees on a walkthrough tends to show up in how the account is treated at renewal.
Looking for the general picture rather than this carrier specifically? Start with our workers compensation insurance overview, or the wider business insurance section.
Other NAICO lines.
NAICO overview
The carrier profile: what NAICO writes, how the appointment works, and where financial strength sits.
NAICO commercial auto
Liability, physical damage, hired and non-owned auto, and what Arkansas requires on a registered vehicle.
In the build queueNAICO general liability
Completed operations, additional insured wording and the contract language that drives it.
In the build queueNAICO property and inland marine
Building and contents values, contractors equipment, and coverage for tools in transit.
In the build queueNAICO surety and excess
Bond requirements, contract thresholds and how excess layers sit over the primary program.
In the build queueWorkers compensation questions we get.
Which Arkansas employers have to carry workers compensation?
Am I responsible for my subcontractor's injured employee?
What is a certificate of noncoverage?
What are the two parts of a workers compensation policy?
How does the premium audit work?
What is an experience modification?
Cribb Insurance Group publishes carrier explainers, Arkansas coverage guidance and commercial insurance education. Add Cribb Insurance as a preferred source on Google.
Send us the payroll and the crew.
Payroll by job function, owner and officer decisions, prior loss runs, your modification worksheet if you have one, and the contract requirements you are working under. We will run it through NAICO and the rest of our commercial markets.
Bentonville, AR 72713
NAICO and National American Insurance Company are marks of National American Insurance Company and are used here nominatively to identify a carrier Cribb Insurance Group is appointed with. Cribb Insurance Group Inc is an independent agency and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting on behalf of National American Insurance Company.
Coverage descriptions on this page are general and simplified. Coverage, availability, eligibility, classification and terms vary by policy, endorsement, class of business and state, and the actual policy language controls in every case. Nothing here amends any policy or creates coverage.
Financial strength ratings are assigned by AM Best, are opinions about a company's ability to meet its insurance obligations rather than about claims handling or service, and can change at any time.
No premium figures, rate estimates or savings figures are published on this page. Workers compensation pricing is developed from the payroll, classifications and loss history of the individual account.
Arkansas statutory references are general information and not legal advice. Statutes are summarized and may be amended, and how any of this applies to a particular business, contract or claim depends on facts this page cannot know. Consult a licensed Arkansas attorney, and contact the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission about certificates of noncoverage and coverage obligations.
Last reviewed August 2026.