Connecticut: Still revolutionary in captive insurance

The previous blog post I wrote for this Connecticut Captive Insurance Association (CCIA) site was related to the innovative use of a captive to fund the crisis of crumbling foundations that has hit homeowners in portions of eastern Connecticut. This is a complex, difficult issue and progress continues to be made, led by one of our CCIA members, Michael Maglaras & Company. Connecticut is also pushing forward to form a captive to help stabilize special education costs for towns and municipalities across the state. This is another very difficult issue that Connecticut has decided to tackle head-on with a revolutionary approach.

So why would you be surprised to hear about CCIA’s revolutionary upcoming annual event, the Cap-a-thon? It is a dynamic, “design sprint” approach to learning more about why and how the fastest-growing risk in our business, cyber insurance, is being placed into captives. The structure is a “hack” on a hackathon, which is a concept born out of the tech world, and will provide a condensed amount of time for collaborative, team-based work.

With the standard captive insurance conference competently covered by other domiciles, CCIA tries to continually reengineer and reinvigorate its annual event. This year, we are capitalizing on the innovative hackathon concept with our Cap-a-thon event. By encouraging intense collaboration and teamwork, focused on particular industries, we aim to help attendees uncover new captive solutions that open the door to further business opportunities and relationships. We believe that captive insurance owners, risk managers from companies considering the formation of captive entities, and emerging start-up companies will all benefit from the sharing of innovative solutions to emerging cyber risk issues. In addition to having access to a few cyber expert panelists who will set the stage for approaches to understanding, managing, and quantifying cyber risk, team members will be offered access to live cyber industry data under the direction of a cyber subject matter expert.

The genesis of this idea came from John Thomson, who is currently serving as CCIA’s Executive Director. John, CCIA board member Dawne Ware of Ware Consulting LLC, and I have been actively involved with the many (and I mean many) ongoing events happening in the Hartford insurance innovation “ecosystem.” Much of this activity originated from collaboration between state and local leadership and private company support. CTNext, a quasi-public entity, was created to support the growth and success of companies and entrepreneurs by providing guidance, resources, and networks. CTNext and three prominent Connecticut insurers joined forces with Startupbootcamp to launch the United States’ first accelerator for insurance technology, in Hartford. The accelerator, part of what’s called Hartford InsurTech Hub, also receives matching grants from insurers and others. The goal is to bring innovation to the insurance industry in Hartford and to foster new insurtech companies and growth in local jobs. In addition to the deliberate efforts in insurtech, CTNext has partnered with others in the community to gather large, Hartford-based innovation partners in other industries such as digital health and additive manufacturing. Over the course of the next year, you can expect to see accelerator programs supporting these industries, as well as insurtech, kicking off in downtown Hartford.

CCIA is proud to participate in this ecosystem. Earlier this year, John and I took part in a panel regarding captives and insurtech that was hosted by Upward Hartford. The audience became much more familiar with the benefits of captives and their future uses in the insurtech age. Captives are proven commercial risk-financing vehicles that allow companies to better manage their risks. We and others in the captive industry believe that insurtech and other innovations will have as big an impact on captives as they do traditional commercial insurance.  On October 16/17, with Upward Hartford as our host, we will endeavor to create an exciting new learning environment for furthering growth in captive insurance in Connecticut.  Register here!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Stephen R. DiCenso, President, CCIA