Farewells

My initial title for this article was "A Farewell to Captives," a play on words based on Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms. But the passing last week of Len Crouse led me to shorten the title to a simple "Farewells."

My captive career started in 1992 when I was named the chief financial officer for the HAI Group, at that time a company comprised of two captives—Housing Authority Risk Retention Group and Housing Authority Property Insurance. Both entities were domiciled in Vermont, which is where I first met Len Crouse. Len and Derick White were already hard at work assembling one of the preeminent captive insurance domiciles in the United States.

Len could be fairly intimidating when you first met him in a regulatory context. I soon learned, though, that if you played square with Len, he and the Vermont Insurance Department would become your best advocates in dealing with other state regulators and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Len loved his job, the game of golf, a good joke, and drinks with friends. He was the consummate ambassador for the captive industry and the State of Vermont.

The other farewell is my own. After 26 years with Captive.com, I am stepping down from any day-to-day obligations. This past year has led me, like many of us, to reexamine how I choose to use my time. While I loved writing on captives, there are other things including two grandsons that I'm going to devote more energy to. And in their case, that means a lot of energy!!!

Above, John Foehl is hard at work....

As I considered what to write about for my final biweekly article, I decided a retrospective on how Captive.com came into existence might be interesting, even if only in a historical context.

As I mentioned above, in 1992 I was hired as the chief financial officer for Housing Authority Insurance. Before that, my professional career had been in banking, but for those old enough to remember, back in the late '80s, there was a rolling series of banking crises, first in the oil patch and then in New England. For the first time in my career, I found myself unemployed after the bank I had helped create failed.

Somehow, I managed to convince John Salisbury, the CEO of HAI, to hire me for the CFO position. At the time, I knew next to nothing about either insurance or captives. By 1994, I had settled into the position as we began to hear discussions about this new technology—the Internet. One of the great things about working with John was he was always open to new ideas and encouraged everyone to think outside the box. It was this atmosphere that provided the genesis for what was to become Captive.com.

In kicking around what the Internet meant for HAI, John, Dan Labrie, and I decided we needed to better understand what a website was all about and its implications for insurance and captives. Our initial discussions with the HAI board suggested they were not interested in building a website for HAI but were at least open to the three of us exploring the concept in some fashion.

Thus was born the idea of Captive.com. By early 1995, we had the outline of what we wanted to do with the site but had also burned through two technology development partners. The primary disagreements were around who ultimately would own the site and content. Our intent had been to launch the site at the Vermont Captive Insurance Association conference in Burlington in August. Because we registered late, we ended up outside the convention floor in the front hallway.

It turned out to be serendipitous. While conference attendees had heard of the Internet, not many had actually seen it live. The buzz generated by our rented 36-inch monitor created a traffic jam into the main convention floor. Before we left Burlington, we had succeeded in securing sponsorship commitments from a large number of the captive vendors that were in attendance.

A year later, the site was flourishing and had attracted a number of competitors. It also underwent an ownership change when the LLC was dissolved and Dan Labrie departed. In his place, the remaining partners hired Chris Mancini to handle the day-to-day operations of the company. Chris became the main face of the organization and the driver of its growth over the ensuing 20 years.

By 2014, the owners started to have discussions about the future of the site as all three individuals were either in retirement or nearing retirement. Informal discussions were held with a number of potential acquirers, but ultimately we settled on International Risk Management Institute, Inc. (IRMI). IRMI President and CEO Jack Gibson convinced John and me to stick around after the sale and provide thought content.

Which brings us to today. It's been a privilege to be part of Captive.com from its infancy to where we are now. While there are any number of websites that deliver the latest news on captives, we have always considered our mission to be more about education. I've enjoyed being able to convey my thoughts on governance, strategic thinking, and management. I hope that some of this has been beneficial to those individuals who, like myself, back in 1992, didn't know a lot about captives.

While I consider this to be my final article, the editors at IRMI have asked that I consider acting as a guest contributor in the future. So, while this may be farewell, it is definitely not goodbye. If I see something that really piques my interest and I believe it to be applicable to captives, you may see my byline again. And to all of the friends and colleagues I have made in this wonderful industry, thanks for sharing part of your lives with me.