Call on Washington Insurance Commissioner to clarify captives lack of supervision

Lobby group the Center for Better Insurance has urged the Washington State Office of Insurance Commissioner (OIC) to ensure public transparency in its new remedial registration program for captive insurance companies.

The group’s founder Jason Schupp has  filed comments with the commissioner on its remedial programme. These “would help prevent captives from leveraging approval to participate in this remedial program into a perception of regulatory supervision by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner”, he explained in a  blog post.

“These comments would also help prevent insurance issued by a captive insurer from satisfying financial responsibility requirements,” he added.

The comments follow the state’s recent publication of its “ Stakeholder Draft” on implementing  new legislation for captive insurers passed in May. The legislation requires captive insurers to register with the commissioner and provides for payment of past insurance premium tax.

In his post subtitled “Reinforcing transparency in captive registrations and fairness in captive practices,” Schupp calls on the commissioner to “protect the people of the State” by including new provisions: that insurance issued by a captive “may not be used as proof of financial responsibility or offered to satisfy any financial responsibility requirement set forth in the laws and regulations of the State”; and that captive insurers should not be permitted to represent that they are “regulated, supervised, overseen, or monitored by the Commissioner”.

The CBI, which says it is “focused on optimizing the value the insurance industry delivers to all stakeholders”, is also requesting the OIC publish program registrations and premium tax filings of participating captives online.