Influential Women in Captive Insurance: Deyna Feng
Deyna Feng, Captive programme director, Cummins
Deyna Feng has been captive programme director with Cummins for more than four years, managing one single parent captive, Dynamo Insurance Company, and running off programmes of three offshore group captives.
In March 2017 Feng successfully led the sale of ICDC, one group captive acquired during Cummins’ business development. She also leads global risk mitigation projects and initiatives, including global loss engineering on property and business continuity planning stress test. Before this role, Feng was based in Beijing, China, responsible for regional risk management in Asia-Pacific, including insurance procurement, risk mitigation, and claim management.
Before joining Cummins, Feng was one of the lead loss adjusters for Crawford China for four years, working with domestic and international insurance companies for large claims of all property and casualty lines, especially products liability and recall, and general liability claims for multinational five-star hotel groups. She worked in other roles in two other companies in China, relating to general management and B2B advertising for five years.
How did you get started in the captive insurance industry?
I have been managing our company’s single parent captive since 2015, and then managing a few group captives due to merger and acquisition for over eight years. This is a great opportunity as our captive has been quite active in supporting company business needs and new and emerging risks in a different market environment in recent years.
Who inspired you or acted as a mentor in your career?
My former boss, Judy Ertel, has been my mentor for my whole career with Cummins and this captive insurance journey. She encouraged me to start online study when I was in China to obtain my ACI designation before relocating to the US to take over the captive role. That paved the road with understanding of captive knowledge from a theoretical level.
Then she guided me through captive governance, operations and everything else along the journey until her retirement in 2021.
What do you think deters people from entering the world of captives?
Captive insurance is a niche industry. Not many people understand the importance of captives and how captives have been playing a significant role in risk management and insurance for parent organisations. People need more professional knowledge to manage captives and build a strategic vision for them. It needs lots of unique skills both professional and strategic.
“People need more professional knowledge to manage captives and build a strategic vision for them.”
How can mentorship and sponsorship programmes be designed to better support the career development of women?
Mentorship and sponsorship programmes are vital for the whole captives industry. We need more talents joining the industry, especially women. Mentorship could provide support to women by one-to-one meetings, webinars, advising on industry trends, shadowing daily activities to share key responsibilities, and encouraging the confidence in women to pursue deeper influence in the sector.
In what ways can companies in the sector create a more inclusive culture that actively promotes gender diversity at all levels?
We start the journey and culture with recruiting more diverse people from colleges and from other industries. We mentor more diverse people and encourage them to pursue their careers with us in the organisation and in the industry. We offer great development opportunities to make them grow. Then we offer great opportunities for them to shine, such as recognising women in initiatives such as this by Captive International.
What challenges are gender-specific to women in the captives industry?
It is a universal challenge for women to pursue any career and look after family and children. The captive insurance industry is so dynamic and it may require more working efforts from women, such as travelling, busy insurance programme renewals and meetings.
It also takes more effort for women to become influential within organisations by managing their own captives as they need to demonstrate the value of captives to many internal stakeholders.
What solutions would you like to see?
It needs women to have a strong will and more willingness to devote to this industry. It needs women to stay closely connected with the industry and introduce new concepts, market trends and successful experience to captives and to their parents.
What are your ambitions?
I want to continue my journey to build a successful captive for our company, especially when we are growing our business with more new technology and more emerging global risks. I want to continue sharing my knowledge and experience with my peers in the industry and mentor more people to see new and young talents grow in the captives industry.
I want to continue contributing to the sector with my influence wherever I can and see more women shine in this platform.
Click here to read Captive International’s first Influential Women in Captive Insurance publication, celebrating the women transforming the captive sector through their sustained excellence and leadership.
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