Aquiline Drones Corporation (AD) has completed the licensing process to set up the captive insurance subsidiary Aquiline Drones Indemnity Corporation (ADIC), making it the first US drone manufacturer to do so. Established through the State of Connecticut Insurance Department, this marks the company’s plans to make the captive domicile “the drone capital of the world”. Under the insurance license, AD will assume the risk of its whole group of companies (including partners and affiliates, such as Drone Vault and Aerialtronics), as well as indemnify its range of products and services administered nationwide by professional drone service providers. ADIC will primarily write insurance policies to cover multiple lines of commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations based on AD’s definitive risk mitigation and management practices. These protocols are supported by advanced analytics, data and technological processes (such as drone manufacturing, cloud-connected drone operations and drone safety training) from AD’s vertically-integrated ecosystem to maximise safety. AD also aims to administer flexible commercial liability products to the wider UAV industry on both a national and global scale. Barry Alexander, founder and CEO of AD, explains the reason for forming a captive subsidiary: “As a company founded by veteran airline pilots, safety has always been paramount to us and is the cornerstone of our growth. There are so many hobbyists and inexperienced drone operators out there who have not completed any formal UAV/drone training, nor do they have access to appropriate and flexible liability coverage. “Our goal is to introduce various aspects of safety at every level and opportunity in a UAV/drone operations environment, for every drone business or individual operator, in keeping them safe and compliant as well as protecting the interest of the general public.” Fenhua Liu, assistant deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Insurance Department’s captive insurance division, adds: “Captive insurance companies have been around for more than 100 years, but the drone industry is flying into new territory. AD has broken new ground by creating ADIC to assume the risk of its entire group of companies.”
