Ensuring the smooth running of an international programme remains a key priority for captive owners, despite new lines and bespoke policies becoming increasingly important, according to Jayesh Patel, global head of market practice management for multinational at Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS).
Speaking in an extensive interview on GCP #83, Patel discussed the new role he took on last year, AGCS’ renewed focus on and organisation concerning captives and what he is hearing from the market.
While AGCS has been involved in some new, innovative captive structures over the past 18 months, including supporting Meta’s captive being deployed alongside a Side A ‘Laser DIC’ D&O policy, Patel said compliance and operational efficiency remains a big focus.
“What I’ve heard from captive owners with multinational programmes, their big bug bear is just making it run smoothly,” he said.
“And it links to what we said before about bringing local policies together, making sure premium payment is paid on time, ensuring that all of the pieces in the chain work well.
“A lot of people are saying, you know, apart from the cool complex topics, please just make my programme run smoothly.”
As captive owners continue to grapple with the hard market, there has been an increasing demand for 100% fronting programmes and more bespoke wordings in policies written by captives.
While previously some commercial carriers were reluctant to engage in pure fronting, the landscape has changed with customer demand forcing a different approach.
This can lead to the (re)insurer playing multiple roles with the captive.
“It’s important first of all to understand what the needs are of the customer at different elements of that captive chain,” Patel explained.
“We’ve got fronting, which is all about making sure you’ve got the right partner in place locally, your right partner in place centrally to cede premium through as quickly as possible.
“What else can we do for that customer within the tower structure? Is the captive retention set correctly? Can we manage those retentions is a better way?
“And then on the aggregate side and on the layers above, is that structure the most effective way as well when we’re talking about cross cost solutions?”
Listen to the full interview with Jayesh Patel in GCP #83 here, or on any podcast app. Just search for the ‘Global Captive Podcast’.