Just got back from a couple of conferences this week and it always gives me great perspective. First, I attended the Self Insurance Institute of America (SIIA) conference in Austin (cool city!) where the focus is primarily healthcare and workers comp. SIIA brings together all the self-insurance groups in these areas, but is seeing a growth in the captive arena as it pertains to stop-loss and workers comp.  VCIA’s Janice Valgoi, DFR’s Dave Provost, Primmer’s Jesse Crary and I did many hours of booth duty over the course of a couple days. We had a number of people come up to us and ask, “So what’s the State of Vermont doing here?”  After explaining Vermont’s role in the world of captives it became clear to them and they seemed eager to understand captive insurance as the next new marketplace, but it also became clear to me that it will be a lot easier for organizations that are already working in the captive space to add stop-loss or workers comp, than vice versa.

At the National Risk Retention Association (NRRA) conference in Chicago (another cool city!) later in the week, I participated on a panel that examined the Next Generation and diversity in the captive insurance industry. The cool thing was that there were a number of insurance students from some nearby colleges who were not shy about what they think the industry should do, including coming into the classrooms and doing a spiel on captives, as well as providing mentoring and internships.  I think one of the best lines about this came from our long-time friend, Michael Bemi. When addressing the issue about the perception that insurance is boring, he said in captives you aren’t selling insurance, you’re building insurance – has a nice ring to it, I would say!

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