Three group results tell the first story.
The three results use the same published 13-week recovery measure for Apr 2025–Mar 2026. NI (icare) is the comparison baseline; each card also shows its cohort and annual movement compared with Apr 2024–Mar 2025.
Claims service providers operating within the NSW Nominal Insurer scheme.
- Compared with NI
- Baseline
- Annual movement
- −2.6 pts
- Claim cohort
- 63,729
Insurers licensed for defined industries or classes of business.
- Compared with NI
- +10.8 pts
- Annual movement
- −0.7 pts
- Claim cohort
- 7,316
Every current self-insurer across both SIRA reporting cohorts.
- Compared with NI
- +2.9 pts
- Annual movement
- −3.2 pts
- Claim cohort
- 8,590
The widest latest gap was between specialised insurers and NI (icare): +10.8 pts. Specialised insurers were also 7.9 percentage points above self-insurers, while self-insurers were 2.9 percentage points above NI (icare).
These are cohort-weighted group outcomes, not a simple average of insurer percentages. They describe the published measure for portfolios of different sizes and composition; the data alone does not identify why the differences occurred.
Movement over time · How the three groups changed
The latest downshift was shared, but not equal.
All three groups moved lower.
From Apr 2024–Mar 2025 to Apr 2025–Mar 2026, self-insurers fell 3.2 percentage points, NI (icare) fell 2.6 percentage points, and specialised insurers fell 0.7 percentage points. The self-insurer group had the largest latest decline.
The two leads over NI moved differently.
The specialised-insurer lead over NI moved from +8.9 pts to +10.8 pts, a change of +1.9 pts. The self-insurer lead moved from +3.5 pts to +2.9 pts, a change of −0.6 pts.
The longer rolling series shows the same ordering.
From Oct 2021–Sep 2022 to Apr 2025–Mar 2026, specialised insurers moved from 92% to 87.3% (−4.7 pts); self-insurers moved from 89% to 79.3% (−9.7 pts); and NI moved from 83% to 76.5% (−6.5 pts).
The pattern is descriptive, not causal.
A simultaneous decline can be a useful signal for further investigation, but these published results do not isolate the effects of portfolio mix, injury mix, claims practice, labour-market conditions or suitable-work opportunities.
Weighting & coverage · Why scale changes the picture
Scale explains why the combined result sits near NI.
NI carries most of the comparison weight.
The combined result for the three included groups was 77.7% and fell 2.4 percentage points from the directly comparable window. NI supplied 82% of the RTW comparison weight and 80% of the displayed full claim cohort, so the combined result naturally sits close to NI’s 76.5%.
The group populations are not the same size.
The latest full claim cohorts were 63,729 for NI, 8,590 for self-insurers, and 7,316 for specialised insurers. Their RTW comparison weighting cohorts were 42,799, 4,412, and 4,957, respectively.
Individual publication coverage is broad, not complete.
Numeric individual RTW results were available for 80 of 83 current entities: 7 of 7 NI providers, 5 of 5 specialised insurers, and 68 of 71 self-insurers. Suppressed or unavailable individual figures are not treated as zero.
A weighted average does not split entities in half.
For NI providers, 2 results were above the group result and 5 were below. For specialised insurers the split was 1 above and 4 below; for self-insurers it was 40 above and 28 below. Different cohort weights mean the number on either side need not be equal.
How to read the data · Scope, definitions and limits
This is one recovery measure—not a complete insurer rating.
Return to work at 13 weeks measures the proportion of workers who returned to work within 13 weeks after having at least one day away from work. Results shown here are rolling annual results for Apr 2025–Mar 2026 from the SIRA source last updated 19 August 2026.
Group results are cohort-weighted published results, not a simple average of insurer percentages. Individual results can be affected by claim volume, industry and injury mix, worker characteristics and other differences. A higher percentage on this page does not, by itself, establish that one insurer is better overall.
The claim cohort shown beside each insurer is useful context but is not the RTW-rate denominator. RTW at 13 weeks is calculated for the subset of workers in the cohort who had at least one day away from work. “Current” means listed in the SIRA source last updated 19 August 2026, not necessarily organisational status today.
A result marked “Not published” on the interactive results page is retained for transparency but excluded from the ordering. It may reflect source suppression or the absence of a comparable numeric result.
Entity context · Interpreting individual insurer results
Leading results sit inside a weighted group picture.
EML led the latest published NI provider results.
EML recorded the highest published 13-week RTW result among current NI providers for Apr 2025–Mar 2026: 81.3%. Its full claim cohort was 29,239, or 45.9% of the NI claim cohort. The cohort-weighted NI provider average excluding EML was 72.2%. That comparison shows how a large provider can influence the NI group result.
Hospitality Industry Insurance was highest among specialised insurers.
Hospitality Industry Insurance recorded the highest published 13-week RTW result among current specialised insurers for Apr 2025–Mar 2026: 90.2%. Its full claim cohort was 2,995 — 40.9% of the specialised claim cohort. The cohort-weighted specialised-insurer average excluding it was 84.7%. The comparison separates the selected entity from the performance of the other published entities in its group.
Self-insurer extremes need cohort context.
68 of 71 current self-insurers had a published numeric result. 3 recorded 100.0%, and their full claim cohorts ranged from 16 to 66. Comparatively small cohorts can produce more volatile percentages.
Explore the chart, then check the source.
Published and last updated by WIA on . This page is a snapshot of SIRA’s insurer recovery-through-work data, retrieved 20 August 2026.