Middle market accounts are continuing to take advantage
of a variety of alternative risk transfer options, including captive insurance
companies. They are seeing the benefits of captive ownership and are utilizing group captives as a mainstay for their long-term risk financing
needs. For most industry observers, this is no news flash; this movement
has been apparent for the past eight to ten years. However, for some, such
as George Rusu, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Captive Resources, LLC
(CRI), this is a phenomenon that started more than 25 years ago.
For Rusu, and his team at CRI, it started when they began work on
Raffles, a member-owned captive, in the mid-1980s. “Up to this point,” he
says, “the majority of captive formations were generated by Fortune 500
companies.” During this time, CRI “became aware that group captives’
needs were significantly different than single parent captives’.”
Accordingly, CRI built its business model on assisting these group captives and in the process has managed to grow Raffles into the largest heterogeneous, member-owned captive, and has also started more than 25
other group captives. Currently, Rusu points out, “CRI captives include over
2,400 owner/members.”
