Building accessible captive insurance

Captive International talks to Gabriel Weiss (pictured) of Luzern Risk , September’s Company of the Month, about what sets the company apart in the market.

Gabriel Weiss, chief executive officer and co-founder of Luzern Risk, spoke to Captive International about the company’s founding vision, how it differentiates itself in the captive insurance market, and its ambitions for growth. His remarks highlight both a respect for the traditions of captive insurance and a drive to make the industry more accessible through expertise, process, and technology.

Weiss explained that Luzern Risk was born out of a recognition that adoption of captives is uneven. “Across the Fortune 500 there’s effectively universal adoption of captive insurance, and then utilisation precipitously falls off a cliff below that,” he said.

The firm set out to address this gap by creating “fit-for-purpose captive insurance solutions for companies that didn’t have massive risk management departments,” ranging from larger companies and mid-market firms to well-qualified smaller businesses. The vision was to “meet growing demand for alternative risk solutions, broadly and captive insurance specifically.”

What Sets Luzern Risk Apart

According to Weiss, Luzern Risk excels at systemisation, having broken the work of forming and managing captives into “nine distinct work streams … orchestrated, managed and executed against, with a great deal of expertise.” This modular approach allows the company to serve as “air traffic control” for clients, offering both day-to-day operational support and long-term strategic guidance. At the outset, the firm works to meet clients where they are and advise on the right structure for their needs.

Technology is a key differentiator. Luzern Risk has built a platform that Weiss described as “a consumer-grade experience that you would expect in many other places in your life, but not necessarily in captive insurance.” The platform provides transparency, education, real-time access, analytics, and predictive modelling.

Still, Weiss stressed: “It doesn’t matter how sophisticated the technology is, if the bookkeeping, the accounting, the regulatory relations, the legal considerations, the tax implications, are not bulletproof.” Advanced tools, he said, must rest on “world-class blocking and tackling.”

Luzern Risk’s portfolio is balanced between first-party and third-party captives. On the first-party side, clients include those in “real estate, in transportation and logistics … manufacturing, some technology companies and … other unique instances.”

Third-party captives include MGAs, brokerages, and SaaS platforms embedding insurance into their products. Recently, Luzern Risk also entered the employee benefits space, preparing to onboard its first clients in stop-loss insurance.

Weiss emphasised flexibility: “We’re able to deliver the breadth and depth of [the core capabilities] in captive insurance, but to do it in a way that is easy and accessible.”

Leadership and Culture

Weiss’s leadership style is shaped by the deliberate composition of his team. About half come from established insurance firms such as Marsh, Aon and Willis, while the other half bring experience from hedge funds, investment banks, and the military.

This mix enables Luzern Risk to balance “the wisdom of the lessons learned in this space” with “a disruptive approach, an outside-in view where we challenge the status quo.” The company is anchored by its mission “to serve our clients in a superior way with a premier alternative risk solutions platform.”

Weiss described Luzern Risk as “an end-to-end solution on behalf of our clients.” The process often begins with education, “demystifying some of the things that they may have heard,” before moving into strategic assessment, actuarial analysis, domicile comparison, structure design, and vendor selection.

At its heart, Luzern Risk positions itself at “the nexus of an ecosystem,” integrating both its own expertise and carefully vetted partners in tax, legal, audit, and claims.

The company is licenced in a wide range of US jurisdictions and is now expanding offshore. “We’re well underway with our process in Cayman and then looking at some other domiciles offshore as well,” Weiss said. He also pointed to “rising interest and rising demand for captive structures in Europe,” adding that he would attend the Luxembourg captive conference later this year.

Looking Ahead

Weiss outlined ambitious growth plans, noting that the firm has been more than doubling in size every year, while he also emphasised continuous improvement in service and technology.

He described the firm’s platform as transformative: “The platform that we deliver to clients today usually leaves them feeling like they’ve just stepped from the radio age into the era of the Internet.” Development is ongoing, guided by client feedback and a long-term technology roadmap, with improvements shipped weekly.

Weiss also noted a wider industry trend, hinting at a broader scope for the firm: “There’s a lot of interest in the ability to invest capital into risk … and we are on the receiving end of a lot of those phone calls.”

Ultimately, Luzern Risk’s ambition is clear: to combine world-class fundamentals with cutting-edge tools in order to make captives more accessible, strategic, and valuable for clients of all sizes.

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