Consultation on proposed changes to ACC’s Accredited Employers Programme

What is the Accredited Employers Programme?

The Accredited Employers Programme (AEP) allows sufficiently large employers to ‘stand in ACC’s shoes’ to make cover and entitlement decisions and manage their employees’ claims for work injuries and occupational diseases. In return for taking on this financial liability, Accredited Employers receive a substantial reduction in the employer levy they pay to ACC.

The premise for AEP is that employers may be able to provide a better and more efficient experience for injured workers than ACC, as the employer should have a closer relationship with their employees and know their industry better.

Only employers who are accredited by ACC can participate in AEP. Becoming accredited involves meeting financial strength requirements and being able to demonstrate sufficient experience and expertise in workplace health and safety, and claims and injury management.

Objectives of the proposals

These changes are aimed at improving AEP so that it:

• puts worker wellbeing at the centre of AEP
• achieves better outcomes by improving the oversight and guidance ACC provides to Accredited Employers
• incentivises Accredited Employers to continually improve their performance.

The proposed changes

The proposed changes to AEP include:

• Introducing a performance monitoring model to better measure the performance of Accredited Employers.
• Strengthening entry and ongoing participation requirements for Accredited Employers by:
  • requiring external health and safety assessments, and
  • strengthening the assessment of claims and injury management processes.
• Providing more tailored pricing options for Accredited Employers.

We are also consulting on the preliminary proposal to require full and final claims liability settlement for all Accredited Employers in the Full Self Cover plan. If there is support for this preliminary proposal, MBIE intends to undertake further, more targeted consultation on a fully developed version of the proposal in 2023.

MBIE is accepting submissions on the proposals from 6 October until 6 November 2022.

Summary of submissions