Workers' comp rates to rise 10.1 percent. (Insurance Update).

While no one expects the South to rise again, workers' compensation insurance rates in California have.

In May, the California Department of Insurance approved a 10.1 percent increase in average workers' compensation pure premium rates. The increase applies to policies that begin or are renewed beginning July 1.

This mid-year increase follows on the heels of a 10.2 percent average increase that began Jan. 1, 2002.

The DOI says the rate increases have been due to: sharp increases in medical costs; intense competition among insurers that drove worker compensation insurance prices below cost, to the point where some insurers could not afford to offer those prices; and the demise of the state's largest worker's comp insurance company, Superior National, in 2000.