WCRB: Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau
Last verified: 2026-07-25 · Reviewed against the bureau's official filings and Wisconsin rating law — how we verify
Bureau Overview
State served
Rate-making model
Administered pricing · uniform rates
Current effective date
2025-10-01
Official site
The Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau (WCRB) is Wisconsin's licensed rate service organization for workers' compensation. It is not a state agency, but it is regulated by the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI). Its purpose is to establish, maintain, and administer the rules, classifications, rates, and rating plans that govern workers' compensation in Wisconsin, and to file on behalf of its member carriers every manual of classifications, rules, and rates.
Wisconsin's defining feature is uniform pricing. The WCRB sets the workers' compensation rates, the OCI approves them, and all carriers charge the same base rate for the same class code. Unlike a loss-cost state — where each insurer applies its own multiplier — there is no rate competition on the base rate in Wisconsin: the manual rate for a classification is identical wherever an employer buys. The WCRB also administers the Wisconsin Worker's Compensation Insurance Pool, the state's residual market.
What uniform rates mean for a Wisconsin employer
Because the base rate is the same across every carrier, Wisconsin employers cannot lower the manual rate by shopping insurers — the lever is the experience modification, dividend plans, and safety/loss-control programs rather than the base rate itself. That makes correct classification and a strong loss history the primary ways to control premium in Wisconsin. The WCRB is the authoritative source for how a Wisconsin business is classified and what the approved rate for its class code is.
For Wisconsin's modeled per-class benchmarks and current filing context, see the Wisconsin workers' compensation rates hub.
Sources
- Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau — About Us (retrieved 2026-07-25)
- Wisconsin Compensation Rating Bureau — official site (retrieved 2026-07-25)
Frequently Asked Questions
Explore Wisconsin workers' comp
- Wisconsin workers' compensation rates by class code
Modeled per-class rate benchmarks and the current filing for Wisconsin.
- All workers' comp rating bureaus
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- NCCI, WCIRB & PCRB class code lookup
Look up a class code and compare how it is rated across states.