SIIA educates midsize employers to use captives to back stop-loss cover

The Self-Insurance Institute of America Inc. has launched a new educational initiative to raise awareness among small and midsize employers about the use of group captives to reinsure medical stop-loss coverage for self-funded health benefit programs.

The objective is to help small and midsize employers use this alternative risk transfer solution to better control the cost of providing health care benefits to their employees by operating self-insured group health plans, according to the SIIA.

“This is the perfect opportunity for the association to leverage its collective expertise regarding self-insured group health plans in a way that has the potential to expand the marketplace when coupled with information about innovative captive insurance solutions,” said SIIA President Les Boughner in a statement.

The educational program will include:

• Targeted outreach to captive insurance regulators to educate them about what they should be looking for and what questions to ask when considering applications for group captives to reinsure medical stop-loss coverage.

• Creation of a new SIIA-hosted discussion group on LinkedIn focused exclusively on this group captive mechanism.

• Publication of information about what industry service providers are currently active in the group captive space to help facilitate business partnerships.

• Development of several educational seminars on this use of group captives that will be incorporated into the SIIA National Conference & Expo, slated for Oct. 21-23 in Chicago.

The initiative was developed by SIIA's Alternative Risk Transfer Committee, which comprises leading captive managers and other industry service providers.

In related news, SIIA is continuing to lead a lobbying and legal defense campaign opposing actions taken at the state and federal levels to restrict the ability of small and midsize employers to self-insure their group health benefits programs.

Last spring, SIAA was successful in derailing proposed California legislation that would have prohibited the sale of medical stop-loss policies with specific attachment points below $95,000.

The legislation was based on a model law developed by the Kansas City, Mo.-based National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners.

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