Rebecca (Becky) Belcher is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from Hiram College, she moved to Washington D.C. and began a career in the insurance field with State Farm Insurance. She earned her Chartered Property/Casualty Underwriter certification and became a licensed staff assistant and underwriter for Property/Casualty insurance. After a time Becky and her husband moved to Dayton. She went back to school at Wright State University where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and a MBA in Accountancy.
Becky’s next career step was with the Ohio Bureau of Workers’Compensation as an Audit Reviewer in 1993. She supervised a team of auditors to insure audit consistency, quality, and accuracy. She was selected as the BWC’s Southwest Ohio Adjudication Representative for audit issues, representing BWC on many insurance premium audit cases.
Workers’Compensation insurance pricing is done by classifying different workplace
exposures into a system of codes, each one with a rate commensurate with the risk associated with that workplace exposure. In most states the classification system used is one devised and maintained by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). Becky was an active participant in Ohio’s conversion to the NCCI system during the mid-1990s. For the next decade, she performed hundreds of rating inspections and premium reviews of Ohio employers: manufacturing, farms construction, wholesale, transportation, public entities, and many more. She also completed post-graduate courses in fraud and compliance.
In mid-2008, after working for the BWC for 15 years, Becky decided to explore her longtime dream of starting her own business in which she would provide workers’compensation-related services to businesses; e.g., conducting independent onsite review of NCCI codes used for premium calculation, checking on the accuracy of premium reporting, conducting pre-or post-BWC audits, serving as an expert witness for disputes in premium audits, providing education on premium reporting, and helping with questions related to adherence to BWC’s policies and regulations for premium reporting.
Recognizing that she needed guidance in the process of staring her business, Becky attended a Dayton SCORE workshop on business planning and then made an appointment to meet with a SCORE counselor to discuss the viability of her business idea and obtain help with her business plan. Fortunately, Becky was matched with Bob Halstead, a longtime SCORE counselor who spent his career in the insurance industry and was co-owner of a large local agency. Bob
encouraged Becky to pursue her business concept and work on a business plan, with special attention to marketing. In September 2008, Becky became sufficiently confident with her business concept that she resigned her job with the BWC. Bob and Becky continued to interact frequently over the next few months as she continued working on her plan, attended small business networking events, formed a Limited Liability Company, Workers’Comp Premium Reduction & RecoveryLLC, developed a trainingmodule for workers’ compensation premium audits, and created a marketing brochure.
Thus far in 2009, Becky’s business is off and running. She has several client assignments lined up, has plans for moving the business out of her home into an office in the spring, and is in conversation with a potential partner. Becky is most complimentary of and grateful for the support of SCORE and Bob Halstead: “Bob’s knowledge of my field and his encouragement to develop a strong business plan and to think hard about how to market my business gave me the confidence to take the major step to start this business. SCORE and Bob are wonderful resources. I can’t thank them enough.”
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