Helio eyes Vermont office as client demand drives captive expansion plans
Helio Risk is likely to establish a physical presence in Vermont within the next year after growing client demand for the domicile prompted the captive manager to place two new captives in the state.
Helio established its first Vermont-domiciled captive in July 2025, followed by its second in January this year.
Speaking to Captive Review in advance of the VCIA conference in Burlington, co-founder and managing partner of Helio, Heather McClure (pictured), said the firm is currently working with several other organisations that are considering Vermont, including two healthcare clients and a construction company headquartered in the northeastern US. If just a couple choose Vermont, she thinks it would justify a physical office.
The captive manager, founded in 2023, currently has physical offices in Oklahoma City, Dallas, Chicago and Jacksonville, but now manages captives across eight domiciles and employs 15 staff or full-time contractors, with three new account managers joining during 2026.
Helio’s current two clients with Vermont-based captives are a large convenience store operator in New York and New Jersey, and a specialty physician group.
McClure explained that the convenience store business, which operates hundreds of locations, had become frustrated with rising commercial insurance costs and the quality of claims handling.
“They felt like, in particular in New York where there’s a very challenging claims landscape, they needed to have more control over what claims got settled versus the ones that went to trial,” McClure said.
“It was not only to save money over commercial rates and retain that money to earn investment revenue off it. For them, challenging the status quo on claims control was important.”
As well as being close geographically, McClure added that the client was reassured in choosing Vermont after regulators were able to demonstrate their experience in the convenience store sector by providing anonymised information on existing captives operating in similar industries.
For the second captive, a specialist physician group with medical malpractice and employment liability exposures, McClure said that while Cayman was assessed, the client preferred an onshore option.
“They wanted to consider onshore domiciles,” McClure said. “Vermont was, again, close and well established in healthcare. They met with the regulators and immediately understood them to know healthcare in that space really well and the kinds of challenges that, in particular, large physician groups face.”
McClure is a former chief risk officer at a large academic health system and managed its Vermont-based captive. Through that time, she said Vermont showed “a specialised knowledge in healthcare.”
“I think the regulators understand those needs that are potentially different from other retail businesses and so were able to really connect with the client,” she added.
Helio currently works closely with law firm Downs Rachlin Martin and a Vermont-based consultant on its Vermont activity, and beyond regulatory expertise, McClure pointed to Vermont’s broader captive ecosystem as a key advantage over newer domiciles.
“I would say a key differentiator there, as opposed to some states, is that Vermont has not just the experienced regulators, but they have the infrastructure around them,” she said. “They have the banking, law firms and the other service providers that are important to build that whole captive team.”
Beyond its Vermont expansion, McClure said another fast-growing area of the business has been the management of US-domiciled reinsurers with international operations. Helio took on its first such client in March this year before adding two more in quick succession.
“These aren’t captives. They’re reinsurance companies that have international operations, but they have a US domicile for their US operations,” McClure explained.
“We’re working with the domicile where they are located, but they also need NAIC filings, so there is a lot that’s done for those clients that isn’t done on the captive side.”
These reinsurers can have captive insureds, as well as own their own captives, but Helio manages only the account of the reinsurer.
US states historically associated with captives have increasingly been looking to attract more of these types of companies through particular parts of their statutes related to reinsurance.
“We see it growing in Vermont, Oklahoma, Tennessee and other states where reinsurers are deciding that the states we traditionally think of as top captive states are also attractive for reinsurance,” McClure added.
“I think Oklahoma has done a particularly good job with that under Commissioner Mulready, who was an ambassador for Oklahoma with the international community, and so there are now several in Oklahoma.”
McClure also identified growing demand from captive owners for independent consulting services alongside their existing captive managers, with Helio increasingly being appointed to oversee specific elements of large captive programmes rather than replacing the incumbent manager.
“We probably have three or four of those accounts where we’re doing pieces of what you would think traditionally of one captive manager doing,” she said. “We’ve stepped in on a piece that has been split off, like the financials or overall insurance placement consulting, or another piece.”
Assignments range from managing accounting and banking functions for large risk retention groups to supporting captive renewals and providing specialist risk consulting for major captive owners.
McClure said the trend is largely being driven by clients seeking an independent perspective, particularly where captive management sits alongside brokerage services.
“I think that clients are seeing the need for an independent manager like Helio, who is not connected to the brokerage,” she said. “We’re getting hired on a lot of consulting contracts for being that independent voice.”
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