Paying It Forward: Modernizing Indemnity Payments for Workers’ Compensation

How a workers' compensation carrier moved indemnity payments off paper checks and hit 99.9% digital adoption in month one.

About Our Client

This regional carrier specializes in workers’ compensation across a specialized employer client base. When the carrier sought to streamline payment processing and include indemnity payments, it did so through ECHO’s payment solution, which was integrated with their existing medical bill review platform and technology.

The Challenge 

Paper checks weren't built for a workforce that never stops moving.

Delivering a better experience to employer clients in the trucking industry meant rethinking how injured workers got paid. Indemnity payments were still going out by paper check: slow, unreliable, and fundamentally misaligned with a workforce that is rarely home to receive mail. Lost and delayed checks created friction with employer groups and eroded trust with injured workers at their most vulnerable moment — while exposing the organization to mounting fraud risk, regulatory pressure, and the administrative burden of managing a payment method the industry was overdue to leave behind.

Fraud follows the paper trail.

Paper checks remain the most fraud-prone payment method across all industries. Suspicious Activity Reports increased 40% for checks and 57% for mail theft in 2024. Check fraud has evolved well beyond simple interception — attackers now extract routing data, reproduce and alter checks, then deposit them across state lines through shell businesses designed to bypass Positive Pay controls. Data shows that 76% of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud, and Property and Casualty insurers were squarely in the crosshairs.

The Solution

A mobile-first payment experience.

The implementation centered on two priorities: making the experience effortless for injured workers and a minimal lift for the claims team.

When a claim reached the indemnity payment stage, injured workers automatically received a text or email notification directing them to a branded payment portal — accessible from any device and purpose-built for a workforce that’s rarely at a desk. Workers selected their preferred payment method from a full suite of options.

Claims adjusters served as active champions from day one, proactively promoting the digital payment options so injured workers were informed and understood the benefits before their first payment was issued. That advocacy translated directly into adoption numbers that exceeded expectations by a wide margin.

Download the full case study for the strategy behind 99.9% adoption.