CFOs Seek Efficiencies in Costly and Complex Workers’ Compensation Plans

As businesses look ahead with uncertainty, cost centers like workers’ compensation plans are under review.

This, as CFOs are turning towards tech solutions that deliver incremental savings by optimizing payments management practices, including managing spending. Workers’ compensation plans require hefty premiums, and managing this expense can be complex.

According to Michael Carus, CFO at InsurePay, the company streamlines this through its Pay-As-You-Go (PayGo) platform, which calculates workers’ compensation premiums based on current payroll data. Carus sat down with PYMNTS to discuss thoughts on 2022 and how he sees 2023 unfolding for CFOs.

Risk Management

InsurePay’s core software product focuses on helping businesses make billing related to workers’ compensation plans more efficient and cost-effective. The company allows businesses to “pay as they go,” facilitating worker’s compensation premium payments tied to data-driven risk analysis.

This will enable organizations to optimize payment processes. For example, instead of one large upfront payment, businesses can spread costs throughout the year and pay premiums based on payroll data rather than an assessment at the beginning of the year.

For Carus, optimizing B2B payments is central to a risk management strategy that always starts with data.

“The essence of our business is about efficiency,” Carus said. “We’re taking what has been traditionally an estimated and non-real-time environment, and we are moving it into a data-driven, real-time assessment of your risk.”

Tethering workers’ compensation premium payments to real-time data helps businesses limit audit risk at the end of the year and allows them to avoid having to finance a significant upfront payment.

That’s a feature that has helped InsurePay grow its business. But there’s more to the value of automating those calculations for companies. Leveraging automation software to calculate business savings helps organizations conserve human resources while avoiding excess costs.

For Carus, there is a landscape of risk beyond optimizing B2B payments and monitoring spending that his business will focus on in 2023.

Balancing Risk and ROI

According to Carus, the calculated risks of the company’s 2023 investment strategy are top of mind: “It’s really ‘Where do we want to spend the money right now for the most efficient level of growth?’”

Like the company’s customers, he will be focused on being “disciplined” regarding the risks they are willing to take.

“You’re never going to have perfect clarity when you are making engineering bets and decisions on what to spend on the technology team,” Carus said.

According to Carus, those bets on investment are surer as they listen to the voice of the customer. As the company develops new products designed to streamline B2B payments and manage costs, it constantly seeks feedback from its customer base for insights on what they want.

“We have capital. It’s not about not having [it]. We’re getting more narrowly [focused] on making sure that we have a better ability to understand, ‘Is this what a one-off customer wants, or is it pervasive and the industry wants it?’”