If you have jobs, locations, work, or employees who are now working from home and you are covered by the NY State Insurance Fund you need to make adjustments to your workers’ compensation insurance policy. Understanding the out of state exposure NYSIF compensation policy can be beneficial to keep your insurance and claims costs down.
Two Quick Points :
Point # 1: If you are covered under an NYSIF workers compensation policy and you now have employees working from home in other states we suggest you add endorsement # 127 extraterritorial to your NYSIF workers’ compensation policy.
The language on the endorsement is as follows:
The policy covers bodily injury to all your employees while performing work within the State of New York and to your regular New York employees while performing work of a temporary nature outside the State of New York. The policy covers claims for benefits by these regular New York employees only if they are filed under the jurisdiction of the New York State Workers’ Compensation law. The policy does not cover claims for benefits filed under any other state’s laws.
The policy does not cover bodily injury to your employees who work solely outside the State of New York except salespersons controlled and directed from New York regardless of where such salespersons were hired.
Given the “temporary nature” of the work at home allowances many companies have made during COVID 19 we suggest New York State Fund policyholders should add this endorsement just as a precaution. Please keep in mind a gap still exists if the employee chooses to file a workers’ compensation insurance claim in their home state as the NYSIF will only pay the NY State benefit. If the employee files in New Jersey which has a higher monthly indemnity limit the gap between the higher NJ rate and the lower NY rate would be self-funded by the employer.
Point # 2: If in fact the work is not “temporary in nature” and more substantive you need to find worker’s compensation coverage for that out of state work elsewhere. The New York State Insurance Fund, NYSIF will not endorse another state under section 3(A) of their New York State Workers Compensation insurance policy. This creates a substantial gap in coverage. Should an employee be injured outside of New York State at another company site, or work location coverage for that injured employee will be denied. Beyond funding the workers’ compensation claim with your own money, the fines levied can be significant adding insult to injury; pardon the pun.
We suggest you speak with a Risk Advisor to bridge this critical coverage gap. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
