CAPTIVES

Creating a captive insurance company is a popular risk-financing alternative, especially when insurance costs are high.  Captives are also popular options for commercial enterprises that want to finance and control their risks.

A captive insurer is an insurance company that is wholly owned by a non-insurance organization, typically a large company or group of companies in the same business.  An intermediary may help a client to establish a captive and/or manage the captive once it is up and running.

A captive’s primary purpose is to insure or reinsure the risks of the parent organization, but they can also cover risks of non-related parties.  A well-run captive can provide insurance coverage at lower rates than are generally available in the traditional insurance marketplace.  Captives rely on reinsurance to spread the risk, just as traditional underwriters do.

Risk management involves far more complexity than the simple purchase of insurance.  A large part of the task is preventing risk in the first place.  Some Insurance Intermediaries are skilled in the art of working with their corporate clients in analyzing and controlling risk, setting up safety programs and other risk control techniques, and arranging alternative risk transfer mechanisms, as necessary.

These activities and services are beyond those typically associated with the placement and servicing of a policy contract, and have contributed to the evolution of intermediaries from their role as providers of basic brokerage services into full-service intermediaries, providing not only strict intermediation services, but a wide variety of fee-based risk management and consulting services, as well.