Finding experienced captive insurance regulators has been a perennial challenge, according to Steve Kinion, director of the Delaware Bureau of captive and financial insurance products.
Speaking on the regulator concerns panel at the World Captive Forum 2019, Kinion highlighted the difficulty of finding experienced talent to regulate captives.
He said: “It has been a perennial challenge to find experienced regulators. Some regulators do multiple jobs including regulating captive insurance companies.”
“In Delaware, we are very strong advocates of the Associate in Captive Insurance designation that the International Centre for Captive Insurance Education (ICCIE) provides. We really push our people to do that. The quality of instruction is top notch.”
Another of the panelists, Sandy Bigglestone, director of captive insurance at the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, said her state had been “very fortunate” to have staff dedicated to captive insurance and suggested that while that system had worked well in Vermont, having staff that weren’t specific to captives was not an issue.
She explained: “There is lots of education out there, there are so many captive conferences now, there’s ICCIE, there’s course through the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.”
“I think that we just need to invest a little bit of time, whether we hire captive specific people or otherwise have staff that we utilise in our state departments.”
One of the audience members argued that the traditional insurance industry faced the same issues.
He said: “This is not an issue that is unique to captives. In traditional insurance, state regulators are in very short supply, many states are very short staffed and they face the same issues.”
“They need to do what is necessary to attract talent but that is hard for a lot of states.”
Dominic Wheatley, chief executive of Guernsey Finance, said that if the captive industry was to continue to evolve it needs to attract new talent in not only on a regulatory level but across the industry generally.
Wheatley commented: “It is important that we have new ideas and new talent at all levels. Innovation can come from the industry but it can also come from regulation.”
In agreement with Wheatley, Bigglestone suggested the growing number of captive domiciles could be positive for the industry.
She said: “It may not be a bad thing that more domiciles are popping up. They’re going to have to develop talent and come up with new ideas and that could be good for the industry.”
