Captive Insurance

By placing a captive at the core of your organization’s risk management program, you can achieve a reduced total cost of risk, stabilize risk capacity, and gain access to reinsurance.

Other potential benefits unique to captives include:

• Better approach to funding for future catastrophic losses such as cybercrime, terrorism, and product liability.
• Coverage for unique risks that may be unavailable in a traditional insurance arrangement.
• Potential to build capital and surplus, as well as fund insurance claims, by paying and setting aside premium payments and underwriting investments to cover losses.
• The ability to capture underwriting and performance management data to build a statistical base, improving the ability to secure coverage with insurers at acceptable terms and pricing.

A captive insurance program can help your organization reduce traditional and emerging risk management pain points. And, by achieving a greater control of risk and reduced costs, your business can enhance your overall economic security and profitability.

Although companies across all industries can enjoy the potential benefits of a captive, those who do create their own captive insurance program typically share the following characteristics:

• Risk exposures that are difficult to insure or uninsurable in the commercial environment.
• A strategic approach to managing risk, exposures, and cost of risk rather than purchasing insurance at the lowest price.
• A commitment to improving their risk profile.

With several unique structures available to your organization, you can customize your captive insurance program and coverage to match your unique risk exposures and strategic initiatives.

For business leaders looking to create their own captive insurance program, there are several structure options.

• Single parent captive: An organization creates its own insurance company to only insure its own business and its employees or those of a controlled (but unaffiliated) business, such as a management contract. This model is ideal for larger companies that need additional discretion, confidentiality, and/or complete risk control ownership. Single parent captives represent the largest proportion of captive insurance programs at approximately 85%.
• Cell captives: Also known as rent-a-cell facilities, protected cell captives (PCC), and segregated cell captives, this program is sponsored by a captive insurance company so that business owners don’t have to create their own. It allows a business to benefit from a captive insurance company without the upfront costs, capital investment, or maintenance associated with forming and managing an owned captive. Cell captives are now seeing significant growth because they are faster, less expensive, and simpler to enter. They provide one or two lines of coverage to those who need to wall off different risks in separate cells.

Cell captives are now seeing significant growth because they are faster, less expensive, and simpler to enter. They provide one or two lines of coverage to those who need to wall off different risks in separate cells.

• Risk retention group (RRG): RRGs are only available within the US. Businesses with similar insurance needs will create and own a liability insurance company to pool risk. This structure is useful for potentially costly liabilities such as automotive risks related to trucking and transportation or medical malpractice. However, it is not applicable for first-party risks such as property or workers’ compensation.
• Group captives: Ownership of this captive program is limited to only the insureds, either a group of heterogeneous (association or industry-specific) or homogeneous (non-related) companies. The captive exists primarily to provide greater long-term cost stability than the traditional market allows.

With the option to enter any of these structures, no matter what industry you are in, you could potentially achieve improved risk management by building a captive insurance program of your own.

Marsh’s Captive Feasibility Study can help establish the ideal captive structure by leveraging proprietary data to determine which lines of insurance should be covered and how much risk to retain. 

Once a captive is up and running, custom reporting and benchmarking against peers can provide insight into your program within the context of your industry, company size, and/or region.

Benchmarking will help to answer important questions such as:

• Is the captive aligned with accelerating our corporate objectives?
• How are my peers using their captives for certain risks?
• How can our captive respond to emerging risks?

Of course, such profiling relies on excellent risk and insurance company data. One-in-four captives worldwide are managed by Marsh. Our insights enable you to improve captive efficiency, identify areas for potential coverage, and provide data-backed recommendations to your C-suite.

In recent years, the pandemic and other global uncertainties have made the commercial insurance market more challenging. This has fueled significant interest in captive insurance alternatives.

Now, following a year of economic uncertainty and dynamic market conditions, organizations around the world are increasingly looking towards captives as a means of managing high-severity risks and gaining enhanced flexibility and more control over their total cost of risk. Currently, it is estimated that there are more than 6,000 captives worldwide.

Captives can be used to insure both traditional risks as well as emerging risks. Major lines of coverage include all-risk property, casualty, automotive liability, workers’ compensation, general liability, and products liability to name a few.

Emerging risks showing rapid growth in recent years include medical stop loss, voluntary benefits, cyber liability, and directors and officers liability. In this report, we also highlight the increase in third-party risks. These risks, in combination with traditional risks, are helping drive the creation of protected cell captives which account for 1 in 4 of our new formations. For details, please see the Captive Insurance Market Report 2023.

Although captive insurance and self-insurance are both types of risk financing mechanisms, they do vary.

Self-insurance is a formalized way of retaining all types of insurance risk. Rather than transferring risk to a third-party commercial insurance company, a self-insuring firm sets aside money to fund future losses.

Similar to self-insurance, captive insurance is a risk financing mechanism in which a company insures itself against future losses. However, in a captive insurance arrangement, the insured creates a more formal arrangement for protecting against its unique business risks by creating its own insurance company.

By working with an experienced captive manager, your organization can achieve potential benefits unique to a captive insurance program, including better protection against catastrophic losses and coverage for risks that may be unavailable in a traditional insurance arrangement.

Although captive insurance programs come with many potential benefits, there are some important considerations that may factor into your business’s decision when it comes to creating one:

• Capital commitments: A parent company must contribute the capital required to support the captive’s business plan as determined by the insurance regulator in the selected domicile. Although these funds remain within the parent’s consolidated group, they may not realize the same return as they would have if invested in the parent’s operations.
• Operating cost: Your business should account for any start-up and annual operating expenses, such as a feasibility study and ongoing captive management.
• Time commitment: The parent company’s management team will need to devote time to the captive. Creating a captive is not a short-term initiative used to achieve an immediate goal. It's a long-term commitment to an organizational risk management strategy.

By allocating the proper resources to your single parent, RRG or group captive, your organization will be positioned to gradually achieve a better grasp on claims and loss control efforts, as well as lower operating costs compared to commercial insurance.

With specialized expertise and global experience, the captive team at Marsh can work with you to create a comprehensive solution tailored to your organization's unique risk exposures and insurance needs. Leveraging industry-best data analytics and benchmarking, we'll help you manage risk on your own terms and gain more control of your company's total cost of risk.

A domicile is the location where a captive insurer is licensed to do business. There are more than 70 captive domiciles around the world – but don’t let that number overwhelm you. Each and every one can be grouped into two categories: onshore or offshore. An onshore domicile is located within a major country or region, such as the US or the EU. An offshore domicile is located outside a major country and includes ones such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.

How do you decide which domicile is right for you? Based on your unique organizational needs, your captive manager will work with you to determine what domicile makes sense to start with and whether any changes should be made over time.

Our professionals in every domicile can help guide you through the life cycle of a captive – from feasibility through optimization. To learn more please contact us at marshcaptivesolutions@marsh.com