Gain new insights into using captives to finance benefit programs, hearing from employers and top advisers on the advantages and opportunities of tapping a captive’s potential for benefits.

Keynote Speaker - TBA

Coffee Break featuring “Answer Desk” with Hugh Rosenbaum*

*What is an “answer desk” anyway? This is an opportunity for attendees to meet with Hugh Rosenbaum and other select speakers to further explore questions that came up during a session or just questions in general about captives.

Basics: Healthcare Reform and its Impact on Employers
Moderator: Jerry Geisel, Business Insurance

This session is for all captive owners and service providers. It will touch on the topics that have emerged as discussion points between regulators, employers, and captive owners and service providers. Find out how financing of medical benefits and meeting the obligations for medical liabilities are being handled by large and group organizations.

Two major themes this year make this session of special interest. The US treasury’s continuing pressure to find more sources of revenue and the narrowing definition of insurance and insurable risk will be the backdrop for discussing the ongoing cases and issues for owners of captives. The ongoing debate about group and cell structures for ownership and control of captives, as well as the incorporation of benefits issues will be of interest to all involved in the captive community. The panelists promise an even-handed treatment, with as much emphasis on what is happening as on the future dangers and pitfalls.

The first examples are now indicators of what can be accomplished in an area that has long been talked about as a development area for captives. Practitioners and program developers will speak from their experience in preparing for implementation, the internal organization discussions and external negotiations that will lead to successful start-up.

Break

Basics: Solvency II and Regulatory Risk

In Europe the juggernaut of Solvency 2 is rolling on, bringing with it the spectre of “equivalence” in Bermuda and other offshore domiciles. A representative from one European domicile will describe experiences in dealing with the European regulators, and the worldwide risk management organization FERMA will describe the position owners of captives have taken faced with the threats of Solvency II. US-based captive owners, and their regulators, will find this of particular significance as the NAIC considers their response to Federal regulation and risk-based regulation.

Advanced: Cells and Cell Structures

The Basic and the Advanced. Use of cells is proliferating, surpassing the growth in stand-alone captives in some domiciles. Some estimates show cells representing more than a quarter of the entire captive market. Cell structures are able to provide more solutions than before, especially to the entrepreneurial and special-purpose captive business. This session will focus on the some of the newer techniques and pitfalls of intra-cell activity, as well as touching on some of the advanced uses of cells by an owner/entrepreneur using cell structures.

Benefits: Employee Benefits the Advanced Basics

Practitioners and captive owners will describe what they have done to get their local and international benefit programs started. While the emphasis will be on US benefits and how to develop and present benefits programs to regulatory bodies, the advantage of these programs for multinational companies will become apparent, too. This session has attracted the largest number of delegates in recent years, indicating the interest and poipularity of the subject.

Breakout Sessions

Basics: Underwriting in a Changing Market

This session will get into the nitty-gritty of how group-owned captives have their profiles and information presented to fronters and reinsurers in a soft market, and in a changing market. A changing market is one that has been stressed by recent events, resulting in a change of perceived or actual risk profile. The session will present the insurers and reinsurers’ perspective as seen by an international broker as well as how an RRG owner and user responds to “underwriting” as regards to members and prospective members.

Advanced: The How and Where of Reinsurance and Fronting Markets

We asked a panel of reinsurance brokers and underwriters to focus on where today’s reinsurance markets really are, and how to find them. US, Bermuda and European markets will be discussed in some detail. Is confidence really returning? Will the recent storm season make any difference? Will international supervision have the effect of raising everyone’s rates? Far from the usual predictions of doom and the inevitability of hard markets, in this session delegates will hear about the positives of the market, its real capacity, and the changing players in worldwide reinsurance.

Benefits Benefits in Captives: The Management Realities

Experienced practitioners will describe what it takes to make programs of group life, disability, and even post-retirement benefits succeed in captives. Once a program has been approved, the actual working, administering, communicating, and management of the process is an art as much as a science. This session will show what needs to be done, what works, and some views on what might become best practices in the area.

Basics: Claims, Captives, and Section 111

It used to be that claims and losses were somehow dealt with as technical topics of interest to specialists. Not any more. Now all owners and service providers for captives have been put on notice that the information requirements for US-based programs have become more onerous and complicated. This is the time to review how claims management actually works, which is what the captive owner and the practitioner on this panel are going to do. Workers compensation will be the main focus, but the tools and techniques will bee seen to be applicable to all claims management and reporting as well.

Advanced: Investment Strategies

This year’s WCF will be looking at “new risks for old money”, and take the view that, after the financial turmoil of the last two years, the emerging risks of the asset side of insurance are the key to success for major insurers as well as for captive insurance programs. The subject is of critical importance to owners of captives involved with employee benefits as well as those in property and casualty captives.

Benefits: Multinational Pooling for Benefits 

Keynote Speaker –TBA

Coffee Break featuring “Answer Desk” with Hugh Rosenbaum

Basics: Health Care Captives

The health care sector is busy digesting the implications of health care reform and other future issues, but the current urgencies and realities of large claims, managing in a time of tightening budgets. The changing landscape of local, national, and even international coverage is of even more importance. Professional liability is always in the forefront, but this session will also touch on health care captive owners’ strategies for including (or excluding) other programs in their captives. Practitioners will use their own experiences in managing captive programs as examples, with emphasis on key factors for success.

Advanced: New Ideas in Captives

WCF is known for being a forum for opening and discussing new ideas for the use of – or abuse of – captive insurance programs. In this session some of the more advanced ones will be brought up in an unstructured format. Delegates are encouraged to bring up their own ideas, and have them discussed by the panel as well as other members of the audience. This promises to be an interesting session, where the forward-thinkers meet the skeptics in a truly open forum.

Luncheon with Exhibitors featuring “Answer Desk” with Hugh Rosenbaum

Risk Manager Panel Discussion

Refreshment Break

Closing Speaker - TBA

Exhibitor Teardown

Closing Reception - Outdoors