Ensuring a Terrorist Doesn’t Benefit From a Claim By Robert Warne - February 20, 2003When is a criminal or terrorist named on the Specialty Designated National (SDN) list entitled to workers’ compensation benefits? Never.
Employers and insurers both play an important part in blocking the flow of any benefits to such individuals targeted by the U.S. Government.
Recently though the Office of the Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published a misleading statement in a FAQ document for insurers that failed to mention the employer’s role in the matter.
The legal authorities at the National Association of Independent Insurers (NAII) took notice to the question and made some recommendations that would clear up certain ambiguities in OFAC’s statement.
The original question published by OFAC was: “A workers’ compensation policy is with the employer not the employee. Is it permissible for an insurer to maintain a workers’ compensation policy that would cover a person on the SDN list, since the insurer is not transacting business with the SDN, but only with his/her employer?
“No, it is not permissible because the insurer would be providing an indirect benefit.”
Kathleen Jensen, NAII insurance services counsel responded to the OFAC in a letter that stated her discrepancies with their misleading question.
In her response she made it clear that workers’ compensation insurers could not knowingly provide an indirect benefit since it wouldn’t have any knowledge about whether a person is on the SDN list until a claim is filed.
But “once a claim is filed the insurer has the responsibility to check the SDN list and report within 10 days to OFAC if the claimant’s name appears on the list. In addition, the insurer must freeze and block payment of a claim, putting claim monies into an interest bearing account,” Jensen explained.
Because a work comp carrier’s policy is with the employer not the employee it typically wouldn’t have a list of employee names to check before a claim is filed.
Which is why Jensen wanted to make it clear that, “The primary responsibility to check whether an employee’s name appears on the SDN list belongs first to the employer. The insurance company’s duty to check this information only exists once the name is revealed.”
NAII has offered to assist OFAC in rewording its FAQ statement. |