Best Workers’ Compensation Insurance Companies for 2026
The best workers’ compensation insurance company in our rating is Nationwide. The Hartford and Travelers are other top companies.
Key Takeaways
- Workers’ compensation insurance helps your business and employees if an employee gets sick or injured on the job, and it’s required in most states.
- If an employee gets sick or injured, workers’ comp insurance helps with medical expenses and treatment, disability benefits, and death benefits (if applicable), as well as lost wages.
- As a business, workers’ comp insurance may help you facilitate an employee’s safe return to work and train a new employee if a former employee can’t come to work. An investigative team for claims and assistance with safety resources to minimize workplace accidents can also be included.
How much a workers’ compensation policy costs depends on several factors:
- Claims History: Your business’s claims history is taken into account when calculating your workers’ compensation insurance premium. If your business has filed a large number of claims in the past, your premium will be higher.
- Industry: The type of work your business does affects what you’ll pay. If your industry has higher risks and more safety concerns for its employees, your premium will be more costly.
- Payroll: The higher your company’s payroll range, the higher your monthly workers’ comp premium.
- State: Workers’ compensation insurance requirements vary by state, though most states do require it. Such requirements are dependent on the number of employees your business has and the industry. Requirements vary by state, as do costs.
On a good note, commercial insurance premiums, including workers’ compensation, are softening according to data from The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers. Data reveals that average premiums increased by an average of just 0.2%.
According to data from the Insurance Information Institute, these private industries account for over 60% of work-related injuries and illnesses. You may have higher workers’ compensation premiums in these industries.
- Service – 24%
- Transportation and material moving – 22.4%
- Production – 10%
- Healthcare practitioners and technical – 10%
To save on workers’ compensation insurance, there are a few different things you can do.
- Safety Measures: Investing in safety measures for your business can lower your workers’ compensation costs. There are private consulting firms that will work with you to create policies and procedures for accident prevention and safety in your workplace.
- Bundling: Select business insurance companies will offer you and your business a discount if you purchase more than one type of coverage.
- State Discounts: Certain states have laws in place that offer discounts if your business meets select standards. For example, a drug-free workplace can earn you a discount or premium reduction in 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
How We Evaluated Small Business Insurance Companies
To build our ratings, we evaluated 24 small business insurance companies and analyzed 10 review sources from both professionals and consumers. We also created a subrating for workers’ compensation insurance from the small business insurance companies we evaluated.
The following describes the U.S. News approach to researching and analyzing small business insurance companies and workers’ compensation insurance companies to guide consumers.
1. We researched the companies people care most about. U.S. News analyzed and compared a variety of publicly available data, including internet search data, to determine which small business insurance companies Americans are most interested in. We identified 24 companies that sell small business insurance policies and then refined that list based on internet search volume, along with the number of professional and consumer review sources (a minimum of four per company). We removed any insurance brokers and companies that sold policies through another company to arrive at our final number of nine companies.
We then compared those nine small business insurance companies across several criteria, including coverage limits, policy features, online accessibility and state availability.
For our workers’ compensation insurance companies subrating, we first identified the companies in our small business insurance companies rating that offered this type of policy. We then evaluated professional review sources to determine which companies were recommended for their workers’ compensation insurance. Small business insurance companies with an Overall Rating of 4.0 or higher were selected for the workers’ compensation insurance companies subrating.
2. We created objective Overall Ratings based on an analysis of third-party reviews. U.S. News’ insurance team applied an unbiased methodology that includes opinions from professional reviews and consumer reviews.
Our scoring methodology is based on a composite analysis of the ratings and reviews published by credible third-party professional and consumer review sources. To calculate the ratings:
(a) We compiled two types of third-party ratings and reviews:
- Professional Ratings and Reviews. Many independent small business insurance evaluating sources have published their assessments of small business insurance companies. We consider several of these third-party reviews to be reputable and well-researched. Rather than relying on a single source, U.S. News believes consumers benefit most when these opinions and recommendations are considered and analyzed collectively with an objective, consensus-based methodology.
- Consumer Ratings and Reviews. U.S. News also reviewed published consumer ratings and reviews of small business insurance companies. Sources with a sufficient number of consumer ratings and reviews were included in our scoring model.
Please note that not all professional and consumer rating sources met our standards for quality and trustworthiness. Therefore, some sources were excluded from our model. To meet our criteria for objectivity, the professional and consumer sources evaluated by our editorial team are judged on several metrics. Professional sources are assessed on their methodology, journalistic independence and brand reputation, while consumer sources are evaluated on their methodology, user verification and quality control, and brand reputation.
(b) We standardized the inputs to create a common scale.
The third-party review source data were collected in a variety of forms, including ratings, recommendations and accolades. Before including each third-party data point in our scoring equation, we had to standardize it so that it could be compared accurately with data points from other review sources. We used the scoring methodology described below to convert these systems to a comparable scale.
The scoring process first converted each third-party rating into a common 0 to 5 scale. To balance the distribution of scores within each source’s scale, we used a standard deviation (or Z-Score) calculation to determine how each company’s score compared to the source’s mean score. We then used the Z-Score to create a standardized U.S. News score using the method outlined below:
- Calculating the Z-Score: The Z-Score represents a data point’s relation to the mean measurement of the data set. The Z-Score is negative when the data point is below the mean and positive when it’s above the mean; a Z-Score of 0 means it’s equal to the mean. To determine the Z-Score for each third-party rating of a company, we calculated the mean of the ratings across all companies evaluated by that third-party source. We then subtracted the mean from the company’s rating and divided it by the standard deviation to produce the Z-Score.
- Calculating the T-Score: We used a T-Score calculation to convert the Z-Score to a 0 to 100 scale by multiplying the Z-Score by 10. To ensure that the mean was equal across all data points, we added our desired scoring mean (between 0 and 10) to the T-Score to create an adjusted T-Score.
- Calculating the common-scale rating: We divided the adjusted T-Score, which is on a 100-point scale, by 20 to convert the third-party rating to a common 0 to 5 point system.
(c) We calculated the Overall Score based on a weighted-average model.
We assigned source weights to each source used in the consensus scoring model based on whether our editorial team deemed them to be reputable and well-researched. The source weights are assigned on a 1 to 5 scale. Any source with an assigned weight less than two was excluded from the consensus scoring model.
We combined the converted third-party data points using a weighted average formula based on source weight. This formula calculated the consensus score for each product, which we call the Overall Rating.