Delaware’s new insurance commissioner, Karen Weldin Stewart, has approved a partially amended rate filing, imposing workers’ compensation rate reductions ordered by her predecessor, Matt Denn.

Karen Weldin Stewart

The Delaware Compensation Rating Bureau filed rate reductions ordered by Denn, now lieutenant governor in Delaware, in December 2008. The filing provides for a retroactive cut of 9.74% in the residual market and 11.13% in the voluntary market, effective Dec. 1, 2008.

“We are pleased that Delaware’s employers will begin to see tens of millions of dollars in savings of workers’ compensation premiums while Delaware’s policyholders can enjoy relief relative to medical fee schedules for worker’s compensation injuries during these challenging economic times,” Stewart said in a statement.

Stewart’s office said the commissioner continues to “aggressively litigate” the enforcement of the remainder of Denn’s November and December 2008 orders, both of which the DCRB has objected to and appealed in the Court of Chancery and the Superior Court.

Denn’s orders determined that Delaware employers were being overcharged for workers’ compensation coverage because the rates currently in effect failed to properly account for certain cost containment measures required by Senate Bill 1 of the 144th Delaware General Assembly.

The bureau continues to appeal the rating discounts in the orders, additional rate reductions totaling 6% of 2008 premium value in the current year and each of the succeeding two years and then 5% in year four.

“Our efforts to do our part in meeting the financial and economic challenges faced by our state and nation will continue on several fronts,” Stewart said. “My administration is committed to insuring that businesses have the resources to grow and prosper, that policyholders are free from onerous premiums and that our insurance industry expands and remains healthy and solvent.”