You have probably already heard of the recent pronouncement by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner in Washington State “allowing captive insurance companies that have unlawfully insured any risk in Washington State in the past 15 years to pay a substantially reduced fine and premium tax penalty for self-reporting the activity.”
The fact that the Washington State believes they can basically outlaw captive insurance with a press release is disturbing at best. It contradicts established federal law on insurance and creates a direct threat to the industry for those organizations that have risks in the state covered with a captive. In the original legal filing by the K&L Gates law firm on the Microsoft case, they laid out the comprehensive argument that (1) the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) does not have the authority to regulate self-insurance; (2) the captive was not in the business of making contracts of insurance and therefore excluded from the definition of “insurer”; (3) the captive is outside the scope of the OIC’s authority under the federal McCarran-Ferguson Act litigated under Todd Shipyards; and (4) the OIC was outside its bounds to try and tax premiums related to risks outside the State of Washington.
VCIA is working with CICA and our other captive insurance partners on a cohesive response to the bulletin. In the meantime, I would advise captives with Washington State presence to check with their captive advisors on the issue. We strongly urge you to give it some time before deciding to comply with the release.
I look forwarded to hearing from you!
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.
Too often we in the insurance world look at the numbers (read data) and create complicated algorithms and processes to wring out the best results in terms of insuring risks for our people and organizations. The events in Paris this past Friday remind us all too well of the human costs behind some of those grim statistics. Like many of you, I was horrified about the attacks in this beautiful city, but it also highlights the toll of terrorism in places we hear very little about: Raqqa, Aleppo, Darfur, Kano.
Captivated 