PURPOSE

This policy has been established in order to clarify the obligation of the members of the Miami Valley Risk Management Association to report both actual and potential claims to the Association in a complete and timely fashion.

It is the policy of the Miami Valley Risk Management Association to require each of its members to report all claims to the Association in a timely fashion. Claims must be reported to the Association in the event that a single loss exceeds or potentially exceeds $500.00 or involves any type of third-party liability. Claims satisfying either of these criteria must be reported to the Association within ten (10) business days from the date of loss or the date of notice of loss to the member municipality, whichever shall first occur. Failure to report a claim within this time-frame may result in the loss of insurance coverage through the Association.

Members are also encouraged to report any incident or occurrence, which may result in the filing of a claim or lawsuit against the member or the Association.

It is understood that all claims will be reported to and paid by MVRMA, and the amount of each claim will be recorded against the member city's loss experience. Members do not have the right to elect to self insure losses. Once submitted, claims must be asserted by the members and processed by MVRMA.

The Claims Manager shall report to the Executive Director, if there is a reasonable concern that a member city is self-administering claims or has repeatedly failed to report claims, according to the established Claim Reporting Policy or Claims Reporting Procedure. If the Executive Director determines there is good cause for further investigation, he shall visit with the Board Trustee of the member city to confidentially gather further information for the purpose of handling the matter internally. If this procedure does not resolve the Executive Director's concerns, he shall report his findings to the Risk Management Committee and may recommend that a claims audit be conducted by MVRMA, which may include a financial audit of the member city to detect any claims payments not previously disclosed. Such audit shall be conducted only upon approval of the Risk Management Committee.

If a claims audit reveals violations of the Claim Reporting Policy, the Risk Management Committee may recommend the following penalties to the MVRMA Board:

(1) A "good faith" violation or violations shall result in the additional claims experience being added to the member city's loss experience.

(2) If there is determined to be a flagrant violation or repeated violations, these violations shall result in the additional claims experience being added to the member city's loss experience. Further, a flagrant or repeated violation shall result in the imposition of a penalty upon the violating member city. Said penalty shall be equal to the value of the undisclosed loss experience and shall be designated as a "penalty loss experience." This "penalty loss experience" shall be included in the calculation of the member city's average annual losses for the next four years as part of MVRMA's PCF calculations. There shall be no "forgiveness" of the unreported loss experience as provided for in the MVRMA Loss Capping Policy.