We all know that Vermont’s captive regulators epitomize the Gold Standard the state embodies when it comes to captive insurance domiciles. Dave Provost, Sandy Bigglestone and the captive team at Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation (DFR) are considered objectively as the best in the business. One reason for their star status is their desire to keep learning and moving ahead with the industry as it evolves. Being highly knowledgeable experts requires active learning.

This week, VCIA coordinated a ½ day educational session with the captive team from DFR (along with many of their colleagues from traditional insurance, banking and securities) on the subject of cybersecurity. VCIA board chair Heather McClure and Lynn Sessions from the law firm of Baker Hostetler lead the session on cyber liability, threats that create cyber exposure, regulatory scrutiny giving rise to claims and best practices when responding to these events. The goal of the session was to instill a depth and breadth of cyber knowledge in the Vermont staff that will be another benefit for Vermont captives.

Heather’s day job is executive director of operations at OU Physicians, and she is a licensed attorney in Oklahoma and Texas with an LL.M. in Health Care Law. She is also the Chief Operating Officer of OU Physicians’ captive professional liability insurer, Academic Physicians Insurance Company, which covers approximately 750 faculty physicians, 700 resident physicians and 700 medical students at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.

Lynn is a leading privacy and data protection attorney with Baker Hostetler with over 22 years of involvement in the healthcare industry. She has handled nearly 400 data breaches and over 100 regulatory investigations.  She was awarded a Burton Distinguished Writing Award at the Library of Congress for her article, “Anatomy of a Healthcare Data Breach.”

These two highly experienced professionals provided the DFR team with actual cyber liability claims and data breach responses, and provided a forum to ask questions of a leading privacy and data protection attorney and an insured who has experienced cyber incidents first hand.  The audience asked great questions and dug deep into what cyber policies should include and how best to regulate them for the good of the captive. Seeing this it is not hard to understand why Vermont remains the Gold Standard!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Rich Smith
VCIA President