WCRates

WCRIBMA: Workers' Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts

Last verified: 2026-08-04 · Reviewed against the bureau's official filings and Massachusetts rating law — how we verify

Bureau Overview

State served

Massachusetts

Rate-making model

Administered pricing · Commissioner-set rates

Current effective date

2024-07-01

Still the rates in force — Massachusetts is an administered-rate state and no revision has taken effect since. The Division of Insurance rejected WCRIBMA's 7.1% increase on May 15, 2025. WCRIBMA's Circular Letter 2446 says its next general filing is expected in 2026 for rates effective July 1, 2027, so no 2026-effective general revision superseded the July 1, 2024 manual rates.

Official site

www.wcribma.org

The Workers' Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts (WCRIBMA) is the state's sole licensed rating organization for workers' compensation. As of August 4, 2026, its official rate history lists no July 1, 2025 change after a proposed 7.1% increase was disapproved; the latest approved general change remains the 14.6% statewide average reduction effective July 1, 2024.

Massachusetts is an administered-pricing state: the WCRIBMA files rates — not advisory loss costs — and the Massachusetts Division of Insurance must approve them before they take effect. Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 152, §53A, workers' comp rates must not be "excessive, inadequate, or unfairly discriminatory" and must fall within a "range of reasonableness." That approval standard lets the Commissioner reject a filing, but a specific ordered decrease still needs a reasoned explanation that a reviewing court can evaluate.

Why the Massachusetts effective date can look old

Because Massachusetts rates only change when the Division of Insurance approves a new WCRIBMA filing, an effective date years in the past is not necessarily stale data — it reflects that no revision has been approved since. When the regulator rejects or holds a filing, the last approved rates remain in force. That is different from a loss-cost state, where advisory loss costs typically refile on a regular annual cycle regardless of contest.

For the current Massachusetts effective date, the reason behind it, and the modeled per-class benchmarks, see the Massachusetts workers' compensation rates hub, which explains the specific filing status.

What the July 2026 WCRIBMA court decision changed

On July 6, 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the Commissioner's authority to disapprove the WCRIBMA's proposed rates and affirmed the finding that the prior rates were excessive. But it sent two issues back to the Commissioner for a reasoned explanation: how the 2024 order arrived at a 14.6% statewide average decrease, and why Class Code 9033 should use a different credibility-data method. The court did not approve the WCRIBMA's proposed 7.1% increase or publish a replacement rate level.

Class Code 9033 primarily covers public housing authority employees. The court noted that one self-insurance group writes about 85% of that class and questioned the unexplained direction to use that group's data instead of the countrywide data normally used to supplement Massachusetts experience. That narrow dispute matters to employers in 9033, but it does not by itself rewrite every Massachusetts class rate. Until the Commissioner acts on remand or approves a later filing, use the WCRIBMA's published rate tools for the current classification and manual rate.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

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