CIRA maintains a financially stable risk-sharing pool by applying a conservative funding and investment philosophy, minimizing the potential for pool-wide assessments. This approach ensures sufficient assets to cover expected losses while building a surplus to protect against adverse loss developments.

As a public agency, we are not profit-driven; any surplus is returned to members as dividends. Staff collaborates with the Finance and Executive Committees to develop the annual budget, ensuring accountability and transparency through quarterly financial reporting.

The General Liability and Workers’ Compensation Programs are experience-rated, meaning member contributions are adjusted based on loss experience to ensure equitable cost distribution. This approach responds to each member’s recent loss history, incentivizing proactive loss prevention. The experience modification factor (ex-mod), which reflects a member’s claims history relative to the pool, adjusts contributions accordingly: A lower ex-mod indicates better-than-average performance (lower contributions) while a higher ex-mod reflects greater risk (potentially higher contributions). To minimize volatility, changes to a member’s ex-mod are capped at 25%. Each member’s contribution is then calculated as a pro-rata share of the total funding requirement, taking into account payroll, self-insured retention, experience modification, administrative expenses, and excess insurance.

Savings are returned to members through the Retrospective Premium Adjustment (RPA) process. The RPA process involves an annual reconciliation of member contributions to expenses for each fiscal year to determine each member’s equity.

Learn about CIRA Program Funding Policies.