FORTY under 40: Andrew Christie
Andrew Christie, Senior manager, EY Captive Consulting Team Americas
Andrew Christie became a Chartered Accountant early in his career with PwC in the UK, not knowing where that would take him (although he knew he didn’t want to stay in audit). He had the opportunity to start his captive insurance career with Aon in the Cayman Islands (driven away by the British winter) as a captive manager.
After five years he switched to captive and risk consulting in New York, which offered a new opportunity career-wise and the chance for an exciting change of scenery on a personal level. Four years later he got the opportunity to manage Aon’s captive management team in the South West and moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Two years ago he moved back to captive and corporate risk consulting with EY, to coordinate with industry-leading captive tax experts.
At EY Christie project-manages captive consulting projects, ranging from feasibility studies to bespoke utilisation work, tax engagements and tax opinions. He is not a tax expert but he has passed the enrolled agent exams in the last year, and working alongside leading industry experts such as Paul Phillips, Mikhail Raybshteyn, Jim Bulkowski and Brad Schock has accelerated the learning curve. He also works on corporate risk projects and provides insurance due diligence assessment and benchmarking for corporate acquisitions and divestments. Essentially EY provide a full captive service offering aside from captive management.
How did you become involved in captive insurance?
I interviewed for a job as a captive manager with Aon in the Cayman Islands. I had no previous captive experience and was fortunate to be at the right place at the right time.
What are the biggest challenges of working in this industry and what do you find most rewarding?
Biggest challenges: benchmarking data can be difficult to come by as there is not a ton of publicly available information. For boutique risks/structures it may be a case of creating something from scratch as there may be no template. This is both challenging and rewarding.
Would you recommend the captive insurance industry to young people as a future career path?
Being a specialist in a niche industry is rewarding as executive professionals rely on your knowledge and ability to solve problems. There are still knowledge gaps in the captive insurance market and you could be the one to step in. The captives industry is stacked towards more seasoned professionals; leadership and management positions will open up in the coming years.
What developments do you see ahead for the captives?
Scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service of 831(b)s means captive owners in this space may disband or look for alternative captive solutions. This opens the door for alternative structures: cells, group captives, or others. More large organisations will look to fully self-insure (or close to) via captive structures as insurance gets more expensive, terms and conditions become more restrictive and exclusions more frequent.
“There are still knowledge gaps in the captive insurance market and you could be the one to step in.”
Does your long-term future remain in the captives market?
Yes. For the largest and most successful organisations, captive insurance companies are a key risk financing tool. I believe captives will become more commonplace and find more sophisticated uses as the world and insuring risks continues to be more challenging.
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