Vermont’s General Assembly is going through the final stages of passing this year’s captive bill, H-538. I say “this year’s” because every year VCIA uses its member legislative survey results as a foundation to meet with leadership at Vermont’s captive management companies and captive attorneys in order to draft proposals for changes to Vermont’s captive statutes. With those proposals in hand, we meet with Vermont’s captive regulators to hammer out what will become the initial captive bill to be presented to the legislature.

We do this every year because we know it’s important. Why? First, the captive industry is always evolving, so we need to make sure Vermont’s laws keep pace. Second, giving Vermont’s legislators a bill every year to review, change and pass allows them to be engaged with the captive industry – a touchstone that cements their ownership of and responsibility to this very important industry to the State.

H-538 will address a number of issues, including the following:

• Allow sponsored captives and association captives to file reports on a fiscal year-end. Many sponsored captives are only open to affiliates, and association captives are limited to members of the association; in those cases it is appropriate to allow the captive’s year to match the owner/insured’s.
• Allow sponsored and industrial insured captives to enter dormant status. When we permit the company to enter a dormant status, we waive the premium tax and the company stays in Vermont, ready to be reactivated when and if the need arises.  The same logic was applied when we passed the dormant status last year: keep the company here rather than have it dissolve.
• Protected cells operate as segregated accounts within an insurance company operated by a sponsor. Our focus in the past has always been on fortifying the walls of the cells so that cell participants are assured that their money is protected from the liabilities of other cells.  The bill will now allow the free movement of cells to a different sponsored captive or the conversion of cells into either an incorporated cell or a separate captive.
• The legislature passed RRG governance standards last session. With a year of operation under our belts, some minor adjustments will be made to clarify the rules for easier implementation.

Thank you all very much, and I look forward to hearing from you.