Our process

Understanding the award winning Duncan Risk Profile Improvement Process

A better insurance program starts with a safer, better run company. Here is how the process works, why it exists, and what clients have reported.

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The Duncan Risk Profile Improvement Process

Designing a better insurance program can dramatically improve a company's safety. Within two years, businesses using this process have reported injury costs down more than 90%, insurance premiums down more than 40%, lower employee turnover, and better productivity and profitability.

See every step as a list

Discovery Conversation

We talk through where your company is headed and how you manage risk today. That conversation shapes everything after it.

Assessment. Understand where you stand today and how you control the risks of doing business now.
Uncover Errors. Rating and audit errors are common, and they usually go unnoticed because nobody inside the company is assigned to look for them.
Correct Errors. Knowing the fine print and the rules is what turns up the errors, and what gets them fixed.
Recover Money. Workers' comp runs on rules. Knowing them lets us recover money you were overcharged, in some cases going back three years or more.
Performance Reports. So you know where you stand, and so you can measure the work we do.
Implementation Program. The roadmap for reshaping your workers' comp program and bringing the cost down.

Validate

You wouldn't walk into an IRS audit without expert advice. Your workers' comp program deserves the same kind of review.

Premium Audit. Confirming that job classifications, payroll and injury amounts are shown correctly.
Experience Modification. Is your experience mod right? Were the right values used to calculate it?
Insurance Company Selection. Have you chosen the right insurance company for your type of business? We look at three areas: things (property), people (comp and benefits) and legal (liability and attorney involvement).
Plan Design. Several kinds of workers' comp plans exist. Are you in the one that makes the most financial sense for you?

Business Improvement

Our job is to help you improve the business and the working lives of the people in it.

Compliance. When OSHA shows up, do you know what to do? We help with OSHA and with FMLA, COBRA and HIPAA, with steps to follow and people to call.
Culture. Building a culture where people don't get hurt. We walk through the Alcoa story and what it did for that company.
Safety Behaviors. Behavior-based safety, not just safety rules. When safety becomes part of the culture, a lot of other things improve with it.
Hiring Practices. Workers' comp injuries start on the date of hire. Two simple employee forms start putting you back in control.
Health Risk Factors. When you know your employees' health risk factors in the aggregate, you can make better decisions about benefits and workers' comp.
Employee Wellness. Healthy, fit employees tend to be more productive, and they cost less in workers' comp.

Manage Injuries

Prevent injuries, and manage the ones that do happen closely. That's how comp costs come down and the mod stays in check.

Communicate. People fear what they don't understand. Explaining how workers' comp works helps the company, the employees and the budget.
Supervisor Training. Education and training are how costs get controlled, and supervisors are where it starts.
Stay-at-Work. Injured workers who stay at work, or come back quickly, recover faster, and the business keeps running. We help build or fine-tune the program.
Medical Provider Relationships. The right doctor, at the right time, with the right treatment. We help you find providers who understand workers' comp.

Changing the game

Why we do what we do

In just the fourth month of my career as an outsourced risk manager, I pulled into the parking lot of a large manufacturer for the first time. I did not realize that making that turn would change my life and my focus forever. What should have been a very loud manufacturing plant was silent, except for the EMS, police and fire department radios.

A worker had been killed.

Since that day, I have kept seeing the impact that one loss had. On the owner of the company, who was a longtime personal friend of the employee. And the bigger impact on the employee's family. His death left a hole bigger than you can imagine in the lives of his wife and two boys, both under the age of three at the time.

I saw how little workers' compensation insurance really does for a family, and I saw the lifelong changes that followed.

All of it came from an event that could have been prevented by either of two people. If one of them had taken 15 to 60 seconds, this employee might still be alive today. If one of them had paused, realized what they were about to do could end badly, and done it differently...

From that day on, my goal has been to have employees go home the same, safe way they arrived.

Really accomplishing that goes beyond safety. Beyond insurance. It takes a deeper understanding of a client's operations, their employees, and the culture that drives the organization. You have to have an impact on all of it to reach what sounds like a simple goal.

It took more than 10 years to develop new ways of identifying and managing the risks and issues our clients face. That meant creating and putting in place culture changing programs and processes, including behavior-based safety to eliminate injuries. It meant changing how our clients hire and orient new employees, to wipe out the higher injury rates new hires tend to have. It meant breaking down the silos that often exist between operations, human resources and safety. And we keep refining the approach and the programs as times change.

What our clients tell us

Along the way, clients have come back to tell us that within just two years of working together we have:

Driven down their injury frequency by more than 60%. Many now go years without an incident.
Reduced the number of employees needing time off for an injury by almost 80%.
Lowered injury costs by more than 90%.
Cut insurance premiums by more than 40%, and by more than half over time.
Decreased new employee turnover, which saves them time and thousands of dollars.
Increased the productivity and profitability of their operations.

The deeper understanding we have of their operations has also helped them design a better insurance program blueprint, so their coverage responds better to the catastrophes they could face.

Since 2004, this approach has helped more than a hundred employers take control of their risks and their insurance programs, and lower their premiums by more than $70 million. Helping businesses manage their risks better has shown, over and over, that they can reduce costs and improve productivity and profitability, and run their companies with a lot less frustration.

See our results Case studies | Client testimonials

I hope you find this site helpful as you take back control of your insurance and improve your future outcomes.

David R. Leng, CPCU, CIC, CBWA, CRM, MWCA
Chief Risk Officer and Executive Vice President, Duncan Financial Group
dleng@duncangrp.com | (724) 978-2139

Watch: why we do this, and how

Why we do what we do

How we do what we do

Where the Employer Success Program comes in

It starts with a Diagnostic and Plan. We read your loss runs, your mod worksheet and your key contracts, and we talk with the people who run the work. You get the pattern behind your claims and a short list of what's worth fixing first.

From there our claims, HR, safety and fleet people work alongside yours, and you get a Score Card at the start and every year after, measured against your own starting point.

How the program works

Start with a conversation

Tell me what's going on. I read these myself and reply within two business days. If there's nothing worth fixing, I'll tell you that too.