I want to thank all those VCIA Members who travelled to Montpelier last week during one of our ongoing snow storms to join Vermont Governor Phil Scott in signing this year’s captive bill into law.

H.764, introduced during VCIA’s Legislative Day in  January, quickly made its way through the legislative process and on to the Governor’s desk a week or so ago. Every year, VCIA and the State work to improve the ease of doing business in Vermont by proposing refinements to Vermont’s captive bill. This year’s bill included some common-sense changes to our annual filing date and reporting requirements which will help streamline processes and provide a new level of consistency for our regulated entities.

As Governor Scott said at the signing, “It is critical that we are responsive to the needs of the industry. These improvements to our captive legislation illustrate Vermont’s ongoing commitment to the captive insurance industry…  This bill will further advance Vermont’s reputation as the ‘Gold Standard’ of domiciles and will provide greater flexibility and consistency for our companies going forward.”

Joining the Governor was Department of Financial Regulation Commissioner Mike Pieciak, Deputy Commissioner Dave Provost, Director of Financial Services Ian Davis, and a number of DFR staffers. With me were VCIA Members Jonathan McKenzie from Alterna, Pattie Henderson from SRS, Dustin Partlow from JLT, Steve Killoran from Maple Capital (straight from maple sugaring – or so he looks in the picture!), Sandi Prescott from Performa, David White from AIG, David Angus from The Angus Law Firm, Keith Jones from National Life, Kristen Sharrow from Johnson Lambert, and Bill Mourelatos and Patti Pallito from Aon. Thank you all for coming on down!

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.

Rich Smith
VCIA President