Table of Contents
What is a Composite Rate?
A composite rate is one insurance rate functional across the board, rather than calculating a percentage for each individual or unit.
There may be a variation in group health insurance plans depending on whether the policy is for a single member or a family.
Advantages of Composite Rate
The composite rating offers advantages to both policyholders and insurers:
- It makes premiums easy to calculate;
- It simplifies the audit process;
- And also, it facilitates cost accounting and budgeting.
How does a Composite Rate Works?
- Composite rating may use in boss health insurance and auto liability, auto bodily damage, or general liability insurance.
- The underwriter begins the procedure by calculating the annual premium in the usual manner. Next, they select a suitable exposure base to use as a substitute for those customarily used.
- An exposure base is a basis a rate is usual upon. For health insurance, it would remain memberships; for good auto insurance, it would be the vehicles in the fleet.
- The underwriter then calculates a regular rate by dividing the premium by the number of exposures.
- For example, for a business with 150 employees that obtains a composite rate on health insurance, the 150 workers are the exposure base.
- The top (in this instance, say it’s $750,000) would divide by 150 to find the average rate: $5,000.
- That $5,000 would use as a composite rate per employee instead of rating each employee individually.
- Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance breadwinners for small group markets (trades with one to 50 employees or up to 100 employees depending on the state).
- It must provide per-member pricing, but they can also offer composite premiums if they wish.
- If so, they must divide the covered memberships into two tiers—younger than 21 and older than 21—for compositing drives.
- The exception is if a state decides to use an alternate methodology for finding the composite premium.1 (For example, Texas uses a four-tier method based on family size, not age.)
How does a Composite Rate work in Commercial Auto Insurance?
- Here is an example that demonstrates in what way composite rating might use in good auto insurance. Don owns Divine Delights, a big bakery that sells bread and additional baked goods.
- The business owns 25 delivery vans insured for $1 million in liability insurance under a business auto policy issued by the Elite Insurance Company.
- The vans currently rate individually, but Don wants to switch to composite rating when the bakery’s car policy renews, and Elite Insurance agrees.
- First, the insurer computes the renewal premium using its standard commercial auto rating procedure.
- The insurer allocates each truck a rating territory, size class, user class, and radius class and then uses these factors to determine the liability rate.
- Elite classifies all of the cars as light trucks used commercially within a local (50-mile) radius.
- The insurer rates each car separately and then calculates the total top. The annual top for the 25 trucks is $50,000.
- Next, the insurer analyses it on a “per van” basis. The composite rate for each van $50,000 divide by 25, or $2,000.
- Divine Delights’ yearly finest is $50,000, the same as it would have been had composite rating not use.
- Don discoveries this rate convenient as he knows he’ll pay $2,000 to ensure any new van for liability.
- When the company’s policy dies, the insurer will behaviour an audit and adjust the premium founded on the number of vehicles in the fleet at that time.
- Uncertainty the bakery owns 30 trucks on the rule expiration date, its annual premium will adjust to $60,000 ($2,000 x 30).
- The composite rating makes it simple to predict insurance costs by standardizing the premium across units. Then those rates typically lock in until the policy renews.
Understanding Composite Rates
- When an insurance company underwrites a new policy, it decides to indemnify the policyholder in contradiction of a specific peril in exchange for a premium payment.
- Determining the quantity of premium to charge the policyholder is a critical step in the underwriting process.
- Underestimating the harshness of possible claims’ frequency can lead the insurer to undercharge the policyholder for coverage. Undercharging may cause the insurer to use capital assets, which will brand the policy unprofitable.
- Insurance companies use numerous different methods when determining the amount of premium to custody for any particular insurance policy.
- The process used depends on the assignment of a single risk rate, health insurance for an individual, a group, health insurance for a business with multiple employees.
Conclusion
A composite rate one insurance rate applies to a group instead of calculated individually. Composite rates are suitable for both the insurer and the policyholder.
To discover the composite rate, the insurer looks at the risk profile of all members or units being insured to find out a premium.
Then it gulfs that by the number of individuals or companies to find the average or composite rate.
