Captive Insurance Law

Captive insurance is in some respects similar to self-insurance, but establishing a captive can often provide significant benefits including better focus on risk and loss control within organizations, access to wholesale services and reinsurance, better cash management and certain tax advantages. For group programs such as risk retention groups, a captive can insulate participants from market volatility and provide improvements in coverage terms and claims defense.

Vermont is by far the largest home for captive insurers in the United States, and by some measures, in the world.  And it’s a small state, which means that regardless of politics, the captive insurance business is more important to the legislature and the administration in the state than anywhere else.  This assures that Vermont’s captive laws stay flexible and competitive and that the regulatory staff receives the resources it needs to stay responsive.  But Vermont is not right for every captive program for a number of reasons.  We can help you pick a domicile and make sure your captive program is a success wherever it ends up.

Many in-house professionals and large-firm insurance departments have some familiarity with insurance matters, but the breadth of our experience and focus on captives allows us to share with you the latest in captive thinking and the experiences we’ve had addressing the exact problems you face. Our relationships with other captive service providers permit us to hit the ground running when we begin a project and to be cost effective finishing it. We know captive insurance. We work well with in-house professionals and outside counsel to augment their knowledge to assure the best outcome for clients.

Captives exist to address the unexpected for their owners, but they also routinely face it themselves. Our involvement assures ongoing compliance with the ever-changing corporate, tax and regulatory landscape, but also provides captive leaders access to new ideas, a look ahead to approaching challenges and experience in dealing with trouble when things go wrong.

Captive programs often have tight budgets and can only collect funds to cover administrative costs such as legal fees at renewals. We offer clients fixed-fee arrangements to provide both budget certainty and billing efficiency. A fixed-fee arrangements permits clients, managers and others on the captive team enjoy timely access to legal advice without having to watch the clock or open a new engagement.

We represent captives in most major domiciles, onshore and offshore. Many legal issues facing captives have little to do with location. These include contracts with national and international service providers, multi-state regulatory issues, federal tax matters and group captive structure, governance and strategy. Our experience in these areas assists clients wherever they choose to form a captive. We have an office in Washington, D.C., but also routinely partner with local practitioners to assure seamless and appropriate representation of our clients.