Survey Reflects Captive Industry Strength, Favorable Future Outlook

The captive insurance industry continues to grow and take on new risks, with captive industry participants remaining bullish on the industry's future, according to the findings of the Self-Insurance Institute of America (SIIA) 2023 Captive Industry Survey.

In its 2023 Captive Industry Survey & Trend Report, SIIA said survey results demonstrate captive industry resilience in addressing both health and property-casualty related risks.

The positive data and industry growth trends reported in the survey include increases in staff hiring, captive formations, and total captive premium amounts, the SIIA report said, trends that are particularly the case in the employee benefits and medical stop-loss areas, where 77 percent of survey respondents reported strong growth in the past year.

For the third year in a row, new captive formations significantly outnumbered closures, according to SIIA, with survey respondents reporting an average of four new captive formations for every one captive closure. That ratio of formations to closures was nearly double that of 2022, when there were 2.5 formations for every one closure.

The survey found group captives representing the largest percentage of the new formations, followed by single-parent captives, reversing last year's trend.

The average estimated premium per captive in this year's survey was $6,734,722, according to SIIA. Meanwhile, captive owners surveyed reported an average of 1.6 captives per business, an increase from 2022.

The SIIA survey found nearly 75 percent of respondents indicating they'd added staff in the past year, with many of those additions being management staff, underwriting, and accounting. That's up from the 2022 survey, when 66.7 percent of respondents reported staff growth.