SCTR (work risk insurance) in Peru: what it covers and what you can claim

Who has to carry SCTR

The Complementary Work Risk Insurance doesn’t depend on your individual job title — it depends on your employer’s activity. If the company you work for carries out any of the more than one hundred activities listed in Anexo 5 — mining, fishing, much of construction and manufacturing, among others, updated by D.S. 008-2022-SA — it must contract SCTR, and pay for it itself, not you: Law 26790 declares it “mandatory and at the expense of the employer.”

What most people don’t know is that the coverage isn’t limited to whoever operates the machinery. Article 6 of D.S. 003-98-SA covers “all workers at the workplace where the risk activities take place,” and it defines workplace broadly: it includes administrative and service units that, because of their proximity to production, are also exposed. A company can only exclude staff who are genuinely removed from the risk, and that’s a decision it makes at its own responsibility, not something automatic.

What it covers: SCTR salud and SCTR pensión are two separate policies

SCTR is actually two separate contracts, and your employer needs to have both:

SCTR salud, contracted with EsSalud or an EPS (arts. 14 and 16), covers medical care — from the first treatment through rehabilitation — when the injury or illness results from a work accident or an occupational disease. Article 2 of D.S. 003-98-SA defines a work accident as “any organic injury or functional disturbance caused at the workplace or on the occasion of work,” and Article 3 defines an occupational disease as “any permanent or temporary pathological condition that a worker develops as a direct consequence of the kind of work performed.”

SCTR pensión, contracted with ONP or an authorized private insurer (art. 18), is the part that pays an economic pension if the accident or illness leaves you with a permanent disability, or causes your death:

• Total permanent disability: a monthly pension of 70% of your pay (100% if you need help from another person for basic activities).
• Partial permanent disability: a monthly pension of 50%.
• Survivor pension: 42% for a spouse with no children, 35% if there are children, plus 14% for each child.

This SCTR pensión is different from your AFP or your ordinary ONP pension: those pay a retirement pension based on age; SCTR pensión pays out for a work-related disability or death, regardless of how old you are.

If your employer never contracted SCTR

This is what reassures most workers the most: your company’s omission doesn’t leave you unprotected. Article 88 of the Law 26790 regulation — in the text substituted by D.S. 003-98-SA itself — is explicit: “the Employing Entity that fails to register… or to contract the complementary work risk insurance… will be liable to IPSS and ONP for the cost of the benefits.” In other words, EsSalud and ONP attend to you and pay you regardless, and afterward they bill the company for the full cost.

On top of that, failing to contract SCTR is itself a labor infraction. Article 27.15 of the General Labor Inspection Law regulation classifies it as a serious infraction, counted per affected worker — not one fine for the whole company, but one for each person left without coverage. For a non-MYPE company, with up to 10 workers affected, that comes to 1.57 UIT; the full table by company size and number of workers is on Sunafil’s fine table page.

The 48-hour deadline and what happens after an accident

When an accident covered by SCTR occurs, the employer has one obligation with a fixed deadline: reporting it in writing to the insurer within 48 hours. From there, the timeline depends on the medical course and isn’t fixed to an exact number of days by the rule: first the temporary-disability subsidy runs, and only once that maximum subsidy period is exhausted — if the disability turned out to be permanent — does the right to a SCTR pensión disability or survivor pension begin.

How to file a claim

If you have questions about your SCTR pensión coverage, ONP handles specific inquiries about it through its official channels. If what you need is to report that your company never contracted the insurance — or contracted it but didn’t report your accident correctly — the path is a complaint to Sunafil, the same as for any other labor infraction.