Since the amendments of Work Injury Compensation Act, insurers in Singapore have reached an agreement to adopt the following protocol in cases where there are multiple insurance policies such as project insurance and annual policy
#1. Contribution Clause:
(a) All Work Injury Compensation (WIC) project policies shall not contain any “Non-Contribution Clause” whatsoever.
(b) Only WIC annual policies shall be permitted to have any “non-contribution” clause.
#2. Project policy responses first
In all cases where a worker is injured in the course of his employment at a project site, the project policy shall respond unreservedly for all WICA and common law claims.
#3. Annual policy claim
In all other cases where the worker is injured due to an accident not occurring at the project site, the annual WIC policy of the direct employer shall respond. This shall apply even if the project policies purportedly extend the coverage to “anywhere in Singapore”.
#4. Coverage for Sub-contractors
Project policies are deemed to extend to cover all tiers of sub-contractors involved in the project i.e. other parties may only be named as additional insured names.
These agreements are ironic because the 2012 June change was primarily due to disputes of the “non-contribution clause”.
This has caused Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to decide that the employer’s annual policy (and not the project policy) must be the primary policy to respond to any claim irrespective of where it occurs.
What the insurers have agreed among themselves is just the opposite.
If you find this is too confusing and want to understand more about Work Injury Compensation Insurance or you simply want to get a better premium
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