For employers with robust benefits programs in place, an integrated approach is continuing to become an increasingly popular way to take things to the next level, and for good reason. Although the concept is not new, and our team of experts has been developing solutions for years, certain aspects are getting employers’ attention.

Spring’s 2016 and 2018 employer surveys, led by Spring’s Senior Vice President Karen English, show that the core drivers to developing an integrated program are:

• Costs savings
• Simpler administration
• Upgraded employee experience
• Enhanced tracking capabilities
• Improved compliance

There’s a lot more impacting these areas than you might think, so let’s take a deeper dive.

Cost Savings:

Having an efficient benefits program with systems that speak to and work with each other can go a long way for your bottom line. Integration provides greater transparency into your workforce – absence management challenges, productivity, employee health – among other things. This knowledge is an opportunity to create a healthier, more present workforce.

If this sounds like qualitative “fluff”, it’s not. One healthcare client was able to save over $10M in direct and indirect costs through integration. These savings resulted from savings in the following areas:

• Workers’ compensation
• Disability
• Unplanned absence
• Vacation
• Other Leaves of Absence

Their program, done in tandem with captive insurance company funding, also yielded risk diversification and stability, as well as further savings of 10% of premiums.

The graph below shows the average levels of employer savings achieved by implementing an integrated program, spanning a range of direct and indirect cost categories.

Simpler Administration:

All parties benefit from an integrated benefits system. An immeasurable amount of time and effort is saved from not having to go to different platforms for critical information. This will speed up the claims process.

The best integrated programs send notifications and communications, and offer automated triggers, case management and documentation. For managers, results are easier to explain. For employees, access is simpler and more approachable. At the corporate level, you can expect faster turnaround time and greater visibility.

Upgraded Employee Experience:

Employees do not typically understand the nuances surrounding absences, nor the various policies, plans, and processes involved. They simply need time away. By integrating absence to include occupational and non-occupational events, your employees will experience:

• Fewer points of contact
• Clearer processes to follow
• Faster turnaround times
• Improved information access
• Increase self-service options
• Decreased confusion

These benefits lead to an enhanced employee experience including higher engagement, both at the organization and with their health. As all HR professionals know, engagement is critical for recruiting, retention and overall performance. Whether at risk or not, all employees will appreciate a smarter, more robust benefits program and an employer that is looking out for their wellbeing.

Enhanced Tracking Capabilities:

To make sustainable improvements, it is imperative to track your integrated program and mine the data across all absences to investigate patterns and draw predictions. An integrated program allows for metrics across plans and policies with drill-down features such as:

• Occupational vs. non-occupational
• Paid vs. unpaid
• Job protected vs. non job protected
• Return-to-work vs. stay-at-work
• Sick, vacation, etc.
• Self vs. family
• Continuous vs. intermittent
• Diagnosis specific

With all these different facets captured uniformly, you have reporting that is comprehensive; supports workforce planning and budget; allows for strategic planning with HR as a business partner; and offers opportunities for prevention; so that your organization can be proactive instead of reactive. These kinds of insights allow employers to move into population health management.

Improved Compliance:

With the hub of intelligence that an integrated program offers, employers have a more reliable way of remaining compliant when it comes to things like the ADA, FMLA and ERISA, as well as any state-specific regulations and policies unique to the company. Automation will make leave requests and absence tracking much easier to manage, and accurate documentation will aid accountability for employers and employees alike.

Ultimately, an integrated workers’ compensation and disability program can have significant positive impact on a company and its employees, especially for larger employers. We have seen great, quantifiable success with integrated programs from our clients. If you are thinking that this process seems too big a task to take on, don’t worry. Any company can start at any point along the continuum shown below, and gradually work their way to a model that facilitates population health management in the workforce.

Most Common Approach is Phased

Our Managing Partner, Karin Landry was quoted in Business Insurance’s article on ways employers can offer effective worker’s comp while still reducing costs. Check out the full piece here.

A recent report from AM Best concluded that, based on their ratings, captive insurance companies outperformed commercial market carriers yet again in 2017. This finding was based on a hard look at balance sheet strength, operating performance, and business profiles of captives as compared to their commercial counterparts.

As long-time captive consultants, we’ve seen a range of clients benefit from a captive structure and are well-versed in their advantages. The AM Best report is a testimony to the positive role captives can play and how they’re able to provide a competitive edge to the organizations using them. Some of the key advantages include:

1) Homogeneous Risks

Whether a Single Parent Captive or a Risk Retention Group (RRG), the insureds of a captive are going to have similar risk profiles and diversity. A Single Parent Captive insures the parent company, so all its risks belong to one entity. RRGs are made up of like companies with similar missions and business products/services, such as a group of universities. In both cases, the homogeneity of risk will benefit the captive by establishing a certain level of predictability which helps with the consistency of rates and an unsurprising loss ratio.

2) Underwriting Profit/Results

According to AM Best, the Captive Insurance Composite (CIC)experienced a 86.4% five-year combined ratio, while the Commercial Casualty Composite (CCC) had a 99.9% five-year combined ratio. Captives enjoy such underwriting profits for a number of reasons, primarily the fact that risk management, control, prevention and mitigation are all at the heart of the captive’s purpose. Organizations are able to benefit from their own good experience. Captives facilitate transparency and more access to data. This allows organizations to act in a proactive manner and implement risk mitigation and control protocols in an almost real time basis. Comparatively, a fully insured commercial market policy may result in a delayed information transition – most commercial insurance arrangements provide reports a quarter after year-end. In addition, frictional costs are lowered with a captive.

3) Return on Investment

A major advantage that organizations with captives have over commercial carriers is the opportunity to recapture part of the premiums. Captives require capital infusion to start and get off the ground. The profits/savings from the insurance carrier accumulate in the captive and can, over time, begin to yield impressive returns on investment. Most feasibility studies use an internal rate of return or a hurdle rate to help visualize potential savings. This makes captives a great alternative for deploying capital and earning a consistently positive return on income, in addition to being able to use it strategically for reinsurance purposes.

Another pro of captives is the ability to evaluate their ROI evaluated against their hurdle rate as their internal rate of return. A company can determine if an investment will give them adequate benefit or savings over a given timeframe based on their rate of return, and then decide if that investment is worth following through with, or if another solution is more economically sound.

These factors combined allow captives a healthy sum of capital and positive balance sheets.

4) Competitiveness

Commercial carriers are sometimes unable to understand the true needs of the insureds and are limited in their offerings. Captives create competitiveness in the market and can compel commercial carriers to offer better terms and costs by virtue of a captive’s existence. In many instances, commercial carriers are threatened by the captive’s ability to take on all the risk and become willing to create quota share arrangements. Captives are a unique, tailored solution for the insured(s)and offer an unbeatable level of customization and very little changes in premiums. They have the ability to insure unique risks and are able to fill in the gaps of coverage where commercial markets are unable to do so.

5) Enterprise Risk Management

AM Best defines Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) as, “establishing a risk-aware culture and using tools to consistently identify and manage, as well as measure risk and risk correlations.” An organization that utilizes a captive is likely to have a stronger ERM system in place, when compared to its captiveless peers, since it is partaking in its own experience and thus is more motivated to better manage its risks. Inmost cases, the captive is a vital cog in the ERM wheel. This close alignment allows for better results for both parties, and a lower total cost of risk for the captive.

6) Retention

Many rated captives have a retention rate of 90% or higher. This is, in part, because policyholders are routinely rewarded through dividend payments from the captive that are significantly higher than any seen in the commercial market. These profits can be used in a multitude of ways to further benefit the captive. For example, policyholders could underwrite additional lines of coverage without the need for more capital, or provide premium holidays on programs, or fund FTEs.

This, combined with the lack of competition means that captives don’t need to shop around for business each year, creating savings in acquisition costs which can then be returned to the captive (e.g. in the form of loss control) to further benefit the insureds.

7) Ability to Identify Emerging Risks

A captive’s structure and foundation in ERM gives it an added advantage of foreseeing emerging risks. Typically, all key stakeholders and the entire risk team of an organization will be involved in the captive’s management and activity. Having a strong alignment between the parent company, the captive, the IT team, the risk experts, the actuaries and other main players means that everyone is on the same page. A captive can make long-term assessments while also flagging and resolving issues quickly. There is no fragmentation of knowledge in a captive setup, and all stakeholders have the same interests. In sum, captives allow organizations to be nimble and react to changing market conditions quicker than commercial market carriers.

Conclusion

As AM Best states, captives performed well in 2017, as did RRGs, and it’s projected that success will continue into 2018 and beyond. The US captive market has grown substantially over the past few years, with domiciles like North Carolina and Hawaii experiencing an uptick in captive formation. Further, we’re seeing captives being used more frequently for nontraditional lines of coverage, such as cyber and medical stop-loss, adding to the list of use cases.

Captives are a great tool for insureds to create unique, custom-made solution in partnership with the commercial markets. They facilitate better management of claims – their expenses and adjustments –through accurate estimations.

Lastly, one of a captive’s most important attributes is its flexibility and ability to be swift and proactive, without the typical issues in a commercial insurance relationship.

Captives should adapt to their parent companies’ changing risk profiles. Following this plan helps risk managers identify and execute necessary changes.

You conducted a feasibility study before forming your captive, establishing long term goals and objectives, determining which risks to write, where to domicile, and how to finance it all.

But that was five years ago.

Since then, your company has made two acquisitions, expanded its workforce, implemented new technology, contracted with new suppliers, and been affected by a new federal regulation. In short, the risk profile has changed considerably.

Is your captive keeping up?

As with all other business matters, your company’s captive needs and goals are likely to change over time, especially with new and emerging risks sprouting up frequently. We recommend a ‘refeasibility ’ study at least every five years to reassess risk appetite and exposure.

A ‘refeasibility’ study ensures your captive insurance company is still serving your organization’s needs and furthering its mission, rather than holding it back. Unlike the initial feasibility study, this periodic checkup must consider your existing captive structure and financing strategies, and take into account how the captive has performed thus far.

To gain a holistic view of your captive’s performance and evaluate the need for change, captive owners should ask themselves these five questions:

1) Do your captive’s goals align with your risk profile?

Evaluating your captive’s goals in the first step of a refeasibility plan. And that begins with collection of data. Claims experience, reserve and surplus levels, loss ratios and other measures of efficiency indicate how successfully the captive has operated and where it has underperformed.

This indicates whether it has met initial goals, and whether those goals should change. This decision is also largely dependent on changes in the insured organization’s risk profile and the subsequent impact on insurance needs.

Moving employee benefits into a captive may be a more efficient way to provide coverage for a larger payroll. Greater reliance on automation or IoT technology may likewise increase the need for cyber coverage tailored to an organization’s specific needs. Emerging risks should be considered in this assessment. For example, new technologies like driverless cars and drones and increasing automation will create both risks and opportunities across various industries.

Performance metrics can help risk managers identify areas where resources can be shifted to support the coverage needs demanded by organizational change and emerging risks.

2) How will proposed changes impact other parts of the captive company?

The second stage of the study considers how adjustments to long term goals affect other pieces of the captive puzzle, such risk financing and use of reinsurance.

Adding new lines of coverage or expanding or reducing existing ones will necessitate an evaluation of risk financing strategies and could lead to changes in an organization’s investment mix or retention levels. This may also impact reliance on
reinsurance as a component of the overall risk transfer strategy.

The best way to pinpoint the extent to which these changes should be made is through stress-testing.

Running through scenarios with reasonable adverse case out comes highlight where more or less financing is needed to service claims and maintain favorable loss ratios.

3) What specific implementation strategies will make your changes stick?

As with any enterprise-wide change, a detailed roadmap lays the groundwork for successful outcomes and can gain the confidence of stakeholders.

This stage identifies lines of insurance that could be moved into the captive or other coverages that would be more cost effective to insure through the traditional insurance market. Along with cyber and employee benefits, some of the most common risks to insure in captives include professional liability, auto liability, reputation, and business interruption.

Capital management strategies should also specify how surplus will be used going forward.

There are several considerations in appropriately managing the capital and surplus levels over the life of a captive, including average cost of capital, retention levels, reinsurance use and taxes, among others. A team of actuaries and consultants could review and develop strategy to address these.

4) Does your existing captive structure still work?

Captives have taken on a number of different forms since their inception — single parent, group/association, rental captives, sponsored captives, non-controlled foreign corporations, etc. The primary differences between these structures center on the way risk is shared among the parties involved and how the captive is financed and regulated.

Sponsored captives, for example, offer a way for companies to take advantage of the established infrastructure of a traditional insurer and avoid the upfront costs of forming a captive — though they are not accepted in all domiciles. Group captives allow companies with unrelated risks to spread out their exposure and reduce their total cost of risk, but can present management challenges.

A captive’s domicile, the scope of risk it seeks to cover, and the financial strength of its parent company all help to determine which structure will work best.

5) Does your captive account for recent case law and regulations?

The technology industry isn’t the only one that is always changing. Laws, regulations and court cases, especially lately, have an impact on captives and need to be considered as you are taking a fresh look at your strategy.

Firstly, there’s tax reform. The tax rate reduction under the Trump administration has had a direct impact on captives, and a consolidated tax return that includes a captive insurance company should have its tax sharing agreement reviewed.

Further, payments to a foreign captive should be reviewed to determine if the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT) is applicable, and anyone in the U.S. with an owner’s interest in a foreign insurance company needs to review their holdings. IRS Notice2016-66 with respect to microcaptives should also be considered, which leads us to our next point.

In light of two recent court cases – Avrahami vs. Commissioner and Reserve Mech. Corp. v. Commissioner – we now have more insight into what the IRS believes to be the criteria for a bona fide insurance company. As a result, we recommend going through a checklist of sorts to ensure the following regarding your captive:

• Is the captive created for a non-tax business reason?
• Is comparable coverage available in the market?
• Are the policies valid and binding?

Domicile-related regulations are also changing. Is yours compliant with your current domicile, and have you looked at the new domiciles available? Lastly, it’s imperative to take a look at the Dodd Frank Act, specifically the self-procurement tax to ensure your captive is appropriately aligned.

6) Are the changes having the effect they’re supposed to?

You’ve identified new opportunities for your captive, supported proposed changes with data and stakeholder feedback, and developed detailed and holistic plans to move forward. But you’re not done.

The final step of any refeasibility study is to measure outcomes. Collect data again to see if newly established goals are being met and how the rest of the captive organization has been impacted.

A great deal of this stage relies on solid industry benchmarks against which to measure current and future captive performance. Furthermore, it’s important that the optimization team takes this data and edits their implementation plan accordingly to keep captive performance on track, making actionable recommendations for staff to follow.

To execute your plan, turn to expert help!

These findings should serve as a baseline for measurement going forward. But look for a team of experts ranging from employee benefits, risk management and actuarial services to walk you through the steps and, ultimately, implementation. This is especially important as new risks continue to emerge and evolve; routine maintenance on your captive is important, just like it is on your car!

Check out this article on Risk & Insurance; where our Managing Partner, Karin Landry explains ways to revaluate if your captive is up to date, and how ‘refesibility’ studies can help employers reduce risk and cut costs.

You’ve had your P&C captive for years and it has continued to perform well throughout. So, what next? How do you capitalize on this success and build on your captive or rebuild an underperforming aspect of it? One word: Refeasibility. Okay, so ‘refeasibility’ isn’t really a word (according to Oxford Dictionary). At least it hasn’t been traditionally, but it is one that needs to be on the tip of the tongue of every captive owner. It is a word that has become somewhat synonymous with captive optimization and very accurately describes what captive owners need todo with an older captive: conduct a new (re)feasibility study.

The Importance of Refeasibility

As with all other business matters, your company’s captive needs and goals are likely to change over time, especially with new and emerging risks sprouting up frequently. Much like your family car, a captive should have a check up on a periodic basis. As a captive matures and companies evolve, captives need to be re-examined to determine if changes should be made to align with current organizational needs. Key reasons for this re-examination include the following:

• Positive or negative experience
  • Example: unexpected adverse loss experience, such as supply chain interruption, resulting in business income loss not covered by insurance
• Surplus release or addition
  • Example: surplus growth for the captive has been good and, as a result, there is now opportunity to add/expand coverages insured in the captive
• Opportunities to add new lines of coverage (that perhaps didn’t exist or weren’t relevant before)
  • Example: Employee benefits or cyber risk
• Change in the risk profile of various risks
  • Example: Litigiousness is on the rise in the insured’s industry and additional protection is needed
• Changes in the regulatory environment
  • Generally speaking, regulatory changes have impacted business directly or indirectly, resulting in loss of revenue. This is a leading concern for small business owners.
• Changes in law (such as those resulting from case law outcomes like the recent Commissioner vs. Avrahami case)

To address all these potential changes, our Spring CARE (Captive Analytical Risk Evaluation) team recommends a captive evaluate its risk appetite and risk exposure at least every five years. Are you still writing the right lines in your captive? Are you still in the right domicile? Would a different structure be more profitable? Would other service providers make a difference? Have your claims changed significantly? Have regulations changed over the years? All this and more can be answered with a good review of your captive by a professional consultant.

Captive optimization starts with a captive refeasibility study. Every refeasibility study is different to varying degrees; the scope and resources required to conduct the study are dependent on the captive’s current structure, the events (if any) that triggered the study and the goals of the company. That said, through our Spring CARE system, we follow a carefully-constructed evaluation structure when our team works through the process of evaluating captive client’s existing captive. Generally speaking, we follow and recommend the following process in conducting a refeasabiity study, starting with goals and ending with measurement.

Goals Stage

In this initial stage, it is important to focus on confirming the goals and objectives of your captive, both new and old. Have the older goals been achieved? How have the goals changed over the years? This is acritical step in laying the groundwork and direction of your refeasibility project. Also critical at this early point is the collection of data. We consider the data to be collected here as not only the stats and facts of the captive, but also the more subjective (non-paper) data that can be gleaned through management interviews and informal stakeholder surveys. Finally, in any good refeasibility study, it is very important to identify changes in your risk profile. The risk matrix to the right shows the four classic actions a company can use to handle each of their risks (DeLoach 2000).

Typically, high probability or high impact risks should be considered for insuring in your captive. Some of the most common risks to insure in captives are listed below . Emerging risks should also be considering in this assessment. For example, A new technology like driverless cars will create both risk and/or opportunities across various industries.

Coverages commonly written into captives:

Impact Stage

You want to be sure you have a clear idea of what you’re looking to accomplish, and to what extent. The Impact Stage of a refeasibility study involves looking at all the different pieces of t he captive puzzle to determine how they would be affected by the changes you’re considering. A few activities that a professional captive optimizer would look to accomplish in this phase would be:

• Conducting an analysis of your risk financing optimization
• Reviewing your current reinsurance levels and optimizing your reinsurance use
• Stress testing of the captive with reasonable adverse case outcomes

Strategies Stage

It’s important to outline the methods you plan on utilizing in your captive refresh; in this Strategies Phase, a professional captive optimizer would first analyze any additional lines of coverage that could be insured by your captive.

Secondly, a surplus management strategy would be developed. There are various considerations in appropriately managing the capital and surplus levels over the life of a captive, including average cost of capital, retention levels, reinsurance use, taxes and a number of others that a team of actuaries and consultants would review and develop strategy to address.

Structure Stage

Now that you know what you want to do and how, it’s time to take a closer look at how it will all work together in a logical structure. Market changes should give you some food for thought. For example, pure captives are increasingly changing to sponsored entities. In this Structure Stage, it is important to identify investment management best practices as well as the optimal collateral structure.

Measurement

Finally, all sound captive projects end with measurement. This is the time to collect new data and determine to what extent goals were met, and impacts made. A great deal of this stage relies on the creation of solid industry benchmarks to measure current and future captive performance against. It is also important in the Measurement Stage for the optimization team to develop implementation plans based on their findings and make actionable recommendations for helping you achieve the goals that were established in the first phase of this project. At the conclusion of the measurement phase, a professional captive optimization team, such as our Spring CARE team, would produce a refeasibility report for your captive. In this report, all of the findings of the refeasibility study are outlined and reviews along with the recommendations developed in this phase. These findings can serve as a base line for measurement.

Conclusion

Regardless of how old or new your captive is, there are a number of internal and external factors that have changed since it was created. With all the changes taking place in the industry, it is a great time to have a professional come in and not only take a snapshot of how your captive is currently performing, but also help you project and strategize where your captive should be in the future. Now is a great time for a captive refeasibility study.