Every year, Captive Review releases their Power 50 list, which spotlights top professionals in the world of captive insurance. This year our SVP, Prabal Lakhanpal was featured on the list at #42. Check out the full article here.

Our captive insurance team was spotlighted in an article by Captive Intelligence, after helping a client reinsure their employee benefits under the United States’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) into their captive. Our client received final approval from the Department of Labor (DOL) in February 2022, with the last successful applicant obtaining approval in 2017. Check out the full article here.

Following Business Insurance’s 2023 World Captive Forum, an article was written about our SVP, Prabal Lakhanpal‘s session on how captives can be a solution to the changing property insurance market. During which he was quoted on tactics employers can take to help control coverage gaps. Check out the full article here.

Our Senior Vice President, Prabal Lakhanpal wrote an article for the Boston Business Journal on how employers can continue to provide strong benefit packages during a time of high inflation. You can find the full article here.

As seen in the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)’s blog.

Last year around this time, I gave a year-one progress report on the Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program, as it had finished its first year of paying out benefits to eligible workers. Since then, the MA PFML program has continued to mature and adjust according to experience, and, around New England, Connecticut has had PFML benefits available for one year, and there are related updates from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine to report.

Massachusetts: A Year in Review

In fiscal year 2022 (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022), the Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave (DFML) experienced1:

– Over 112,500 applications, with 20% being denied
– 59% of applications were related to medical leave, 31% for bonding, and 10% to care for a family member
– Only 32 approved applications for military exigency leave and 7 approved applications to care for a service member
– Claimants aged 31-40 had the most approved claims (40%) and more than 1.5 times as many women had an approved leave (61% of claims), compared to men (35% of claims)
– Average weekly benefits were $793.55 for family leave and $754.84 for medical leave
– Turnaround times from the time the application was submitted to an initial decision was a median of 17 calendar days
– Average duration of leave was 12 weeks, assuming a 5-day work week
– Total benefits paid was equal to about $603 million (an increase of about 245% from FY21 which accounted for January 1, 2021-June 30, 2021)

In 2023, Massachusetts will be updating maximum benefit amounts and reducing total contributions.

– The maximum weekly benefit is increasing to $1,129.82, effective 1/1/2023. This is an increase of about $45 from the 2022 weekly maximum. For any employees who may have leave that runs from 2022 into 2023, the weekly benefit that was determined when leave was approved will continue. The new maximum will not be applied until there is a new MA PFML leave application.
– Contributions, however, will be reduced in 2023. The total contribution is decreasing from 0.68% to 0.63%, for employers with 25 or more covered individuals. The medical leave contribution will be 0.52%, with employers funding 0.312% and employees responsible for up to 0.208%. The family leave contribution will be 0.11%, with employers able to collect the total contribution from employees. Employers with less than 25 employees are not required to submit the employer portion of premium.

The financial earnings requirement was also updated in 2023. Employees must have earned at least $6,000 and 30 times the PFML benefit amount during the base period to be considered eligible for MA PFML.

Connecticut: First Year Activity

Connecticut has now had PFML benefits available for 1 year. During the first six months of the program2:

– Over 44,127 applications, with 40% being denied of those that received a decision
– 44% of approved applications were related to medical leave, 29% for bonding (own child and adoption/foster care), 18% for pregnancy/childbirth, and 9% to care for a family member
– Only 15 applications were approved for family violence, 12 for organ and bone marrow donation, and 2 for qualifying exigency
– Claimants aged 26-41 had the most filed claims (53%) and more than double the number of females applied for leave (28,814), compared to males (14,213)
– Average weekly benefits paid were $562.01
– Average approved duration of leave was 6.79 weeks
– Total benefits paid was equal to about $81 million
– Almost 137,000 businesses have registered with the CT Paid Leave Authority and claim applications have been received from every city and town in the state

Based on the experience in the state in 2022, Connecticut is not making any major changes to the program in 2023. However, the social security contribution and benefit base increased to $160,200 on January 1, 2023, and CT minimum wage increases to $15/hour on June 1, 2023, which will impact benefit and contribution amounts.

Please note that the program has some key differences when compared to MA PFML, such as the availability of leave for organ and bone marrow donation, as well as leave related to family violence. Differences in benefit amounts, leave duration, and eligibility conditions also make it difficult to directly compare CT and MA PFML experience.

Other New England Updates

Massachusetts and Connecticut are not the only New England states to be seeing PFML progress. Rhode Island has an established temporary disability insurance program (TDI), which was the first statutory disability program in the country, established in 1942. In 2014, they became the third state to offer family leave benefits through temporary caregiver insurance (TCI). In addition, the state does not allow private plans, making the model slightly different than other PFML programs in the region. On January 1, 2023, a few updates to TDI and TCI became effective. The state’s taxable wage base increased to $84,000, which will impact the contribution calculation. The benefit duration also increased to 6 weeks, from 5 weeks in 2022. Finally, the financial eligibility conditions claimants must meet increased so that employees must have paid at least $15,600 in the base period or meet the alternative conditions wherein they earned at least $2,600 in one of the base period quarters and base period taxable wages equal to at least $5,200. 

A new outlier is New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation, state-sponsored voluntary plan where NH employers and eligible NH workers can purchase a paid family and medical leave plan through the state’s insurance carrier. New Hampshire selected MetLife as its insurance partner and began paying benefits on January 1, 2023.

Similarly, Vermont spent 2022 developing a voluntary program to be administered by The Hartford, their selected insurance carrier. Beginning July 1, 2023, state employees will be covered under the program, with other private and public employers with 10 or more employees eligible for coverage in 2024, and small employers and individuals able to purchase coverage in 2025.

Maine also made strides in developing the structure of their state mandated PFML program. Maine created a commission to study PFML programs and to propose a PFML model for the state, which kicked off in May 2022. Policy recommendations are expected to be presented to the Legislature in 2023. 

Are You Up to Speed?

As the PFML landscape continues to evolve at the local, state and federal leaves, policies need to be monitored on an ongoing basis. Employers should ensure they are compliant with the requirements of each individual leave program, as differences exist between all established paid family and medical leave policies. If any of your employees are impacted by a state PFML policy, organizations should review plans, policies, and processes to confirm they are in line with any legislative changes. To do so, the following checklist can be followed:

– Register in any new states where employees are located, if required
– Ensure contributions are being collected appropriately
– Update employee notices and benefit documentation, as appropriate
– Confirm employee count to determine if any changes to contributions are required
– Review private plan strategies based on previous year experience and changes to contributions
– Renew private plans as appropriate
– Validate company sponsored leave programs coordinate with PFML to the extent possible

If you need assistance ensuring PFML compliance or to assess the optimal plan set up for your organization, Spring’s consultants are happy to help www.springgroup.com

We would like to congratulate Prabal Lakhanpal for his recent promotion to Senior Vice President at Spring. We are glad to have his positive and driven personality on our team! Check out Captive International’s full recap here.

Our Senior Vice President, Prabal Lakhanpal was quoted in an Captive Intelligence article on how captives can be utilized in the private equity space. You can find the full article here.

As seen on Alera Group’s Insights Page

In the cyclical market for Property and Casualty Insurance, we are more than a year into hard-market conditions, leading growing numbers of businesses to consider alternative risk funding. That, in turn, has created an abundance of work for insurance actuaries and Captive Insurance consultants.

OK, that’s a lot of insurance speak for one paragraph. Let’s unpack:

— A hard market for insurance is characterized by a rise in rates, a reduction in options for coverage, heightened scrutiny by policy underwriters and reduced carrier capacity for coverage limits. A combination of catastrophic weather events and so-called “nuclear verdicts” in liability lawsuits — as well as the cyclical nature of the Property and Casualty (P&C) Insurance market — were the driving forces behind the hardened conditions before the onset of COVID-19, and the pandemic exacerbated matters. Rate increases have leveled off to some extent in 2022, but, in general, most conditions in the market remain unfavorable to consumers.

— Alternative risk funding — also known as alternative risk financing or alternative risk transfer — is a mechanism for providing coverage by means other than commercial insurance. Types of alternative risk funding include Captive Insurance programs, in which a business or group of like businesses creates and funds its own private insurance company to cover one or more risks in the realms of both P&C and employee benefits. Workers’ Compensation, General Liability, Auto, Professional Liability and Medical Stop-Loss are the more common coverages to start with when insuring through a captive, but captives often expand into a funding mechanism for many of an organization’s other lines of insurance, including Cyber and Umbrella (also known as Excess Liability Insurance).

— Insurance actuaries use math, statistics and financial models to analyze the cost of risk and determine how much money a company should pay to protect itself against risk. All insurance carriers employ actuaries to help set policy premiums and limits. Some insurance agencies work with actuaries to negotiate policy details with carriers or, in a captive arrangement, to determine a premium that will cover claims and, in the long term, reduce the insured’s total cost of risk. Captives have the advantage of also building up retained earnings over time and allowing companies to take on more risk, generating additional insurance cost savings for the parent. Among multiple P&C capabilities, actuaries who work with or for an agency also educate clients on the cost of risk and how to manage it.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s talk about the role of an actuary in managing the cost of risk and protecting your business with a customized insurance program — whether you’ve chosen to pursue alternative risk funding or not.

Why an Alternative Solution? And Why Now?

Business leaders know all too well about the hard market for Property and Casualty Insurance. Just as the pandemic began to wane early in 2022 and there were some signs of casualty rate increases leveling off, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalated supply-chain disruption and fuel shortages, accelerating the rise in economic inflation. Damage resulting from Hurricane Ian only made matters worse, of course, driving reinsurance — insurance for insurers — into what the Bank of America termed a “true hard market” of its own, with rising costs getting passed on to consumers. These issues have led to overall increases in U.S. P&C industry combined ratios over the past few quarters, sparking further rate increases for certain lines.

It’s no wonder more organizations are looking at captives and other alternative risk-funding solutions.

“Overall, between 2017 and 2021, captives added $4.3 billion to their year-end surplus while returning $5.8 billion in stockholder and policyholder dividends, representing $10.1 billion in insurance cost savings over purchasing coverage from commercial market third parties.”

“The number of U.S. captives continues to rise, although the growth of captive formations was tempered by the onset of economic uncertainty resulting from the pandemic, as well as ongoing scrutiny from the IRS and greater regulatory and reporting requirements.”

“However, these adverse conditions can serve to highlight the benefits of the captive segment and provide businesses an incentive to establish them,” said Fred Eslami, associate director, AM Best.

“‘This current environment allows captives to customize coverage for risks that may be uncommon or difficult to write or place in the standard market,’” Eslami said.

The growth in Captive Insurance has led to an increasing willingness on the part of carriers to work with captives and regard them as partners rather than threats, increasing options for captive solutions. And even if an organization in the end chooses to forgo alternative risk funding – either for an entire P&C program or for individual coverages, such as cyber or commercial umbrella – simply exploring an alternative and having it as an option can improve its position in the insurance market.

Actuary Capabilities: Your Data, Your Future 

For insurance agents and brokers, designing an insurance program tailored to your industry and company is as much art as it is science. Working with an actuary enables you to incorporate greater amounts of empirical evidence into evaluating risks and determining insurance solutions: Here’s what the numbers demonstrate about your situation now, and here’s what our analysis shows about how you’ll perform using this solution.

While any good broker will work to design an insurance program customized for your business, a broker working with an actuary will be especially well-equipped to design a solution tailored to your unique needs and goals. Among the key issues an actuary can help brokers work through are:

  1. Determining appropriate retention/deductible levels to help the client reduce the total cost of risk;
  2. Estimating client retained unpaid claims liabilities at quarter/year-end;
  3. Estimating carrier letter-of-credit need for a large deductible program; 
  4. Estimating possible retained loss outcomes at various confidence levels;
  5. Performing a captive feasibility study.

Many brokers work in silos, taking a vertical approach in evaluating risk based on industry. Actuaries generally don’t distinguish by industry; they analyze across various industries, focusing on each individual client’s loss history (including frequency and severity), claim status, policy details, exposures and risk-control program before determining financial projections for the organization. Taking the long-term view allows for consideration of fluctuations in company and market performance over a period of time, and increases the likelihood of long-term savings and profits.

Optimizing Your Insurance and Benefits Solutions

As companies grow, they generally reach a point where their claims experience is predictable across one or more lines of coverage. Able to determine such predictability, an actuary can then help you:  

If you’ve reached the point where your business is paying, say, $100,000 to $250,000 in annual premium, a group captive might be the best solution because you probably aren’t yet structured appropriately to meet the insurance tests required to form a single-parent captive and the economies of scale may not be there for a single-parent captive solution. In such a case you may need to diversify your risk with other organizations (heterogeneous or homogeneous) — in a group captive or in a shared-risk pool solution utilizing reinsurance — for at least the time being.

The bigger, more complex, more diversified a company becomes, the more a fully funded, single-parent captive emerges as an optimal solution in which the business is insuring only its own risk. A single-parent captive also allows for more coverage flexibility and transparency than a group captive program. Quite often, both benefits and P&C risks are insured by a single-parent captive.

What drives the decision to move from traditional, carrier-based insurance to a captive program is savings and, ultimately, return on investment (ROI). How? By moving expenditures that create carrier profits into the captive solution. Captives are highly efficient, with very low expense ratios, unlike carriers. Free from providing a carrier with underwriting income and investment income on held reserves, you’re able to retain this income to ultimately generate a profit and facilitate an insurance mechanism that competes with the commercial market.

An Organization-Focused Approach

In taking an organization-focused approach toward financial analysis, actuaries look not only at funding for Property and Casualty Insurance but also at spending on employee benefits. Most captive insureds will see annual savings between 10% and 40% for premiums that flow through a captive instead of the commercial market.

As we approach the end of the year, Alera Group invites you to the final event in our 2022 Engage series of employee benefits webinars, A Look Ahead to 2023: Hot Topics and Trends. Join us on Thursday, December 15 as we discuss benefits financial officers and HR professionals need to think about now — including alternative solutions — as they plan for the year ahead.

ACCESS ALERA’S WEBINAR HERE 

As the Cayman Captive Forum starts just this week. We are proud to announce Spring and our consultants have been recognized for multiple awards from Captive International’s Cayman Awards 2022. We look forward to continuing to do excellent captive work in all domiciles, including but not limited to the Cayman Islands.

Spring has been awarded for: