Ryan Smith 
Raji Chadarevian opened his AIS 2026 session with three injured workers and a clear thesis. Medical severity is not a single number. It is a sequence of demographic, treatment, and timing decisions that compound over the life of a claim. Senior Solutions Advisor Ryan Smith reads what it means for workers’ compensation carriers.
Tracy Ryan, Andrea Coleman, and Jeremy Attie closed AIS 2026 with a panel that made one case more clearly than any session in recent memory: workers’ comp is a federation, not a system. Senior Solutions Advisor Ryan Smith reads what the three-bureau dynamic means for carriers running across NCCI states, California, and New York.
Patrick Coate and Paul Hendrick paired their AIS 2026 sessions to make a quiet but unmistakable case: the workers’ comp book of 2030 will look meaningfully different from today’s. Senior Solutions Advisor Ryan Smith reads what their data on aging workers, new hires, and industry mix means for 2026 underwriting and claims.
Stephen Cooper opened his AIS 2026 economy update with an uncomfortable truth: 2025 saw the slowest U.S. job growth outside a recession in more than two decades, but workers’ comp kept turning. Senior Solutions Advisor Ryan Smith reads what Cooper’s data means for premium, frequency, and severity heading into 2026.
NCCI’s 2025 State of the Line marked the twelfth consecutive year of underwriting gains for workers’ compensation, but the underlying math tightened. Combined ratios rose five points. Accident year crossed 100. Reserve redundancy slipped to $14 billion. Senior Solutions Advisor Ryan Smith reads what these shifts mean for 2026 planning.
Ethan Mollick takes the AIS 2026 keynote stage with a cross-industry frame on AI adoption. Workers’ compensation needs the localization. We unpack the honest state of AI adoption in our industry, where it is already paying off, where the gaps still are, and what ’embracing the AI revolution’ looks like for carriers, SIGs, captives, MGAs, and TPAs.
When someone says medical severity is up six percent, it sounds like a single data point. NCCI’s Raji Chadarevian frames AIS 2026’s severity session this way: medical severity is more than a single metric. Here’s what’s driving claim costs going into the rest of the decade.
Workers’ comp is a national industry with no national system. From California’s independent bureau to New York’s competitive pressures, state dynamics reveal what’s coming for the entire industry.
The American workforce doesn’t look the way it did five years ago. Workers are older, in different industries, and in different states — and the injury patterns are shifting with them. Here’s what the data says.
Workers’ comp is priced off payroll and shaped by employment patterns. When the economy shifts, carriers feel it — sometimes immediately, sometimes with a lag. Here’s how to read macro trends before they hit your book.
Every year, the NCCI State of the Line defines the conversation at the Annual Insights Symposium. Here’s what the 2026 numbers are likely to reveal about combined ratios, loss trends, and the financial health of the workers’ comp market.