The best and brightest captive owners from across the globe, as voted on by their peers in the captive industry

After receiving hundreds of responses to our call for nominations at the start of the year for leading captive owners, we are delighted to reveal those that received the most votes!

Below you will find our top 20 captive owners for 2024, along with some information about them and their achievements:

Lance Abbott

Chief executive officer, BevCap Management

Lance Abbott has spent over 16 years with BevCap Management, which manages four homogenous group captive programmes for the food & drink industry. Among the group captives Abbott has founded are Arizona-domiciled Independent Innovative Captive Insurance Companies and Quality Check’d Insurance Companies. He was also elected to the CICA board of directors in 2016 and served as president in 2020.

Cheryl Baker

Head of North American risk management, Stellantis

Cheryl Baker built up her reputation in the captive space over 10 and a half years with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and in total has more than 20 years of insurance and risk management experience. She moved to Stellantis in October 2022 and her various areas of focus include professional liability, corporate claims, privacy/cyber risks, strategic utilisation of captives, and technology-based risk management solutions.

François Beaume

Senior vice president, risks and insurance, Sonepar

François Beaume joined Sonepar in January 2019, where he supports the administration of its reinsurance captive, but has over 20 years of experience in captives and risk management. He previously spent 11 years at Dalkia and four and a half years at Bureau Veritas, and has been on the AMRAE board of directors for eight years – helping the French risk management trade association lobby for changes to the country’s captive legislation at the end of 2022.

Paul Berkemeier

Vice president, international treasury and insurance, The Coca-Cola Company

Atlanta-based Paul Berkemeier has spent the last 23 years with The Coca-Cola Company, holding roles as credit analyst, finance manager risk management, director of global risk finance, and since August last year his current role of vice president, international treasury. In that time he has played a significant role in increasing the efficiency of Coca-Cola’s risk transfer programme, and making better use of the business’ captives.

Rogier Bouwman

Global pensions and benefits manager, Heineken

Rogier Bouwman is the global head of pensions and benefits at Heineken and chairman of the board at Haystack – Heineken’s employee benefits captive. Via Haystack, Heineken has increased control and flexibility on the benefit design, removed exclusions and simplified terms and conditions to improve the employee value proposition. Additionally, it has strengthened the DE&I agenda by making benefits more inclusive and enabled global minimum benefits.

Francesco Capraro

Reinsurance captive operations manager, Sigurd Rück

Sigurd Rück is the Zurich domiciled, pure and self-managed reinsurance captive of Saipem, with a diversified portfolio of P&C, EBs and FLs including D&O and cyber. Francesco Capraro joined Sigurd in its start-up phase in 2009 as an underwriting and risk analysis assistant and since 2016 has been leading the reinsurance captive operations department, responsible for the premiums and claims activities of the captive’s inward fronted business and outward retrocession business.

Yannick De Combas

Global head of insurance, Louis Dreyfus Company

Yannick de Combas has worked at Louis Dreyfus Company, a merchant and processor of agricultural goods, for 11 years. As global marine insurance manager for more than seven years he was responsible for the firm’s captive and its reinsurance programme, and as group insurance coordinator led the underwriting committee of the captive. He became global head of insurance in August 2020.

Heiko Ditzel

Senior director, risk finance & transfer, adidas

Heiko Ditzel joined adidas in 2010, and assumed various positions within the insurance department before assuming his current role in 2021. He was appointed non-executive director of adidas’ Ireland-domiciled captive International Re dac in mid-2018, which today writes around €48 million GWP of non-life and life business with cyber insurance being the latest addition. In 2018 he was also made managing director of adidas’ in-house broker Insurance & Risk Consultants GmbH.

Gabriele Frea

Head of insurance and risk financing, Enel Group

Gabriele Frea has made Enel’s captive something of a pioneer, as it become the first captive to obtain a licence to be domiciled in Italy at the end of last year. Frea has been in his role since 2011 and is chairman of the supervisory board of Enel’s captive, operate as a link between the company and the group – called to make sure that the captive operates in all aspects in a manner consistent with the group strategies.

Santiago Gomez

Head officer, PEMEX

Santiago Gomez has been the head officer of PEMEX’s captive re/insurance company domiciled in Switzerland for the last 11 years. Gomez self-manages the captive acting as a legal representative in Zurich, and in charge of the captive’s legal and compliance, general and technical accounting, finance, and IT. He has over 20 years of international experience within the re/insurance industry, and previously spent nine and a half years at AXA.

Tracy Hassett

President and CEO, edRISK

After running MSL group captive edHEALTH since 2015, Tracy Hassett last year masterminded the process of forming new sponsored captive edRISK, and converting edHEALTH into a cell within edRISK. By doing so, she has enabled the membership of educational institutions to potentially write more collectively pooled risk classes, such as cyber or property. She is also the VCIA board chair, and was elected to a second consecutive term in October 2023.

Matthias Helmbold

Vice president global risk benefits, Health & Wellbeing, DHL Group

The recipient of Captive Review’s 2023 Captive Innovation Award for DHL Group’s underwriting of medical risks, Matthias Helmbold has over 20 years of experience in EB at companies including Syngenta, Coca-Cola, and MAXIS GBN. In his current role, Helmbold oversees all employee benefits insurance across DHL’s 220 countries and the Health & Wellbeing activities associated with them. He serves as director on the boards of the group’s captives, underwriting annual EB premiums in excess of €150 million.

Lars Henneberg

Vice president, head of risk management, A.P. Møller-Mærsk

During a difficult period of shipping firms Lars Henneberg has led Mærsk through stormy waters, and utilised the firm’s captive to excellent effect, for which he was recognised as captive risk manager of the year at 2023 Captive Review European Awards. Henneberg has spent the last 14 years with Møller-Mærsk, and since 2018 has also been chairman of the board of the Accident Insurance Association for Danish Shipping (UFDS) and board director of the Standard P&I club.

Melissa Hollingsworth

Enterprise risk manager, Atlanta Housing Authority

Melissa Hollingsworth has over 20 years of experience working in the insurance industry, with skills in property and casualty insurance, enterprise risk management, captives, claims adjusting, policy interpretation, litigation management, subrogation, mediation, arbitration, loss control, and mitigation. She serves on the CICA Amplify Women committee and spends her free time mentoring students aspiring to enter the insurance industry.

Karen Hsi

Executive director of captive programmes, University of California

Since taking over as the permanent executive director of the University of California’s captive programmes in May 2023, Karen Hsi has optimised the programme by closing its RRG, and initiated a captive-funded internship enabling students to attend UC’s Washington campus get closer to the captive industry by working in the DC Department of Insurance Banking and Securities. She has worked at UC since October 2009, rising up the ranks to her current role.

Michelle Johns

Executive director – enterprise risk and insurance, Cleveland Clinic

With a background in law, and 20 years in a variety of legal and risk management duties, Michelle Johns brings a unique set of skills to Cleveland Clinic. In three and a half years she has managed various claims and litigation and developed a robust risk financing programme, which included the formation and continued management and oversight of two successful captive insurance companies.

Megan Ogden

Chief operating officer, Energy Insurance Services

After first joining captive manager Energy Captive Management LLC in April 2020, since April 2022 Megan Ogden has been COO of Energy Insurance Services, a large sponsored cell captive domiciled in South Carolina. Ogden has experience across various captive industries and domiciles, having started her career nearly 20 years ago with Marsh Management Services in Cayman, where she spent eight years, before spending another eight with JLT in South Carolina.

Jennifer Pack

Vice president of risk management, Hyatt Hotels Corporation

Jennifer Pack is the vice president of risk management at Hyatt Hotels Corporation, overseeing global insurance, health, safety, security, and claims management. Leading a diverse team, she also manages Hyatt’s Arizona-domiciled captive Xenia Assurance Company as its president. With prior experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a CPA certification, Pack has been with Hyatt for 16 years.

Kristen Peed

Head of corporate risk, Sequoia

After eight and a half years at business services firm CBIZ, where she helped the company launch its first captive, Kristen Peed at the end of 2023 moved on to join HR business Sequoia. Sequoia formed Arizona-domiciled captive Mariposa in 2021, and Peed is looking to find ways the captive can add further value to the business. Peed was also earlier this year named vice president of the RIMS board.

Theresa Severson

Senior vice president, insurance and risk, Kite Realty Group

Theresa Severson was recognised with awards by both RIMS and CICA last year after managing the transition of two large insurance programmes into one, following the merger of Kite Realty with Retail Properties of America. She has over 20 years of insurance experience, including the last two and a half years with Kite, and was in October last year promoted from vice president to senior vice president of insurance and risk.