ICS: A bold and better spin on group captives

Innovative Captive Strategies explains why their newest group captive solutions provide unique benefits and better results for their owners.

 

Since 1999, Innovative Captive Strategies has been creating, managing and marketing group captives that are more exclusive than the typical mega captives in the marketplace.

That means our captives have fewer and thoroughly vetted members. The result of our captive model is greater control for our captive owners, higher engagement among the members and better results. Today, we manage more than 35 group captives that serve a variety of industries.

While the broader appetite for the property and casualty group captive marketplace has remained consistent over the last 20 years, our newest group captive solutions are expanding into new market segments and offer unique benefits to our captive owners.

Delivering a better insurance solution

Aegis Insurance, Ltd. is a group captive designed specifically for delivery service providers and the ‘final mile’ transportation industry.

In 2020, Amazon delivery service providers and the final mile industry were thriving. Although delivery service provider owners were successful, they were tired of having a lack of control over various facets of their business, notably, their volatile insurance costs.

They longed for a strategy that gave them more stability and control over their insurance. That was precisely when Aegis Insurance, Ltd. decided to offer the solution delivery service providers have been waiting for.

Many companies have frustrations with the traditional insurance market, but why do delivery service providers need their own captive solution?

Delivery service providers typically have limited operating experience and insurance history. This brief loss history is typically a hurdle when it comes to forming your own insurance group captive or qualifying for an existing group captive.

Our typical group captive companies require a long track record of safety and claim information. Despite the minimal history, Amazon puts a high focus on safety by compensating its delivery service providers based on safety performance, which directly aligns with our group captive model.

As captive owners, each company in Aegis has skin in the game and is incentivised to perform as safely as possible.

Innovative Captive Strategies focuses on intentionality when it comes to recruiting new captive members and only adds delivery service providers who are truly invested in safety above typical requirements.

Captive Risk Control Workshops are another resource that allows members to share best practices with business owner partners.

Outside of the captive, delivery service providers may feel isolated in their distribution center because fellow delivery service providers in their area may view them as a competitor. The group captive platform gives delivery service providers the opportunity to partner with peers who have a shared interest in working together to elevate their performance regarding safety and beyond.

Envision a better tomorrow

Another unique area that Innovative Captive Strategies Group Captives provide benefits is in sustainability efforts.

Envision Re, Ltd. was recently formed in collaboration with Zurich North America and consists of like-minded business that keep risk management top of mind but are also committed to reducing their carbon footprint through environmentally friendly and sustainable innovation in their operations.

Envision Re is a group captive insurance company that brings together safety-minded companies who share a common goal of rising above their respective industry standards of sustainability.

Innovative Captive Strategies has built its reputation around creating captives with higher engagement and more control with a peer group experience for its captive owners. This leads to loss ratios that outperform the industry standards.

We are now taking that same model that has led to so much success in loss prevention and adding the focus of sustainability through the expertise of Zurich’s world-renowned resilience solutions team. In addition to the normal vetting procedures for Innovative Captive Strategies captives, each potential member of Envision Re will go through a sustainability assessment prior to joining the captive.

The sustainability assessment will provide a starting point and road map on their journey to improve their carbon footprint. In the typical group captive, members participate in either the risk control, finance or underwriting committee.

The committees dive into their respective topics and make educated business decisions and recommendations to the board of directors from a governance standpoint.

Envision Re adds sustainability as an additional committee that will focus on environmental innovation and sustainability efforts that will measure, benchmark and, ultimately, improve the sustainability impacts of the captive member companies.

Taking ownership of health insurance

Although property casualty group captives have been the foundation of Innovative Captive Strategies since 1999, our employee benefits group captive practice has been growing rapidly since our first group was created in 2012.

Innovative Captive Strategies recently created OWN Health, an employee benefits group captive exclusive to employee-owned companies. This endeavour was created in partnership with the National Center of Employee Ownership.

Employee-owned companies are naturally a great fit for group captives because they have better-than-average risk profiles, are well diversified and benefit from strong company cultures and a long-term focus.

Employee-owned companies share the epitome of like-mindedness when it comes to running their organisations, how they communicate with their employees and their commitment to excellence.

The goal with OWN Health is to bring together like-minded employee-owned companies that are committed to the health and wellbeing of their employee shareholders to create an exclusive captive insurance company that outperforms the standard market.

Doing business boldly

In addition to our group captive capabilities, Innovative Captive Strategies, along with its international sister company, Global Captive Management, Ltd., provides consulting and captive management services to all types of captive insurance companies, including groups, single-parent and segregated cells.

Regardless of the situation, Innovative Captive Strategies has you covered because we believe exceptional is just another bold way of doing insurance.

Whatever niche our clients and broker partners are in, Innovative Captive Strategies is prepared to bring unique solutions to the table when it comes to our captive expertise.

We do business boldly, by challenging the way insurance has always been done and giving the control back to our captive owners.

5-6 November 2025

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