Captives can provide antidote to hard market

The global captive insurance market can provide solutions and an antidote for companies struggling to cope with the continued hard market in the commercial space, according to Anne Marie Towle of Hylant.

Towle, the chief executive of Hylant’s Global Captive Solutions arm, was recently promoted to also become chief executive of Global Risk Management at the firm. She told Captive International that it was exciting to take up her new position at this time.

From a global perspective, she said, Hylant is still seeing continued growth in captives due to the hard market, which is making almost all lines of coverage difficult to place.

People are seeking alternative solutions, said Towle, not just large, very complex clients, but also with small and middle market clients.

She said the challenge is being able to design programmes and structure solutions that really benefit Hylant’s clients amid the global landscape – and doing this in a way that enables a true partnership with those clients.

“They're looking for solutions,” Towle said. “From my strategy perspective how do we help them, partner with them? When we think about global risks, and the large clients that we serve, it's the aspect of being able to deliver solutions and understand what their exposures are really. We need to take that to heart and really tailor that strategy with global risk management and captive solutions from a development standpoint.”

Towle said that Hylant wants to be more involved from a global risk management perspective, thoroughly reviewing programmes and making sure it’s bringing the right resources to the table.

Towle further explained that this initial review process will take six to nine months as she becomes integrated with Hylant’s current structure with its risk management clients, its processes, what it needs to do for improvement. She will then define a strategy that will lead the company into the years to come.

She concluded: “I think the exciting part is what we talk about in global captive solutions all the time, that we're designing programmes, we're helping to solve for problems in the captive space, because many times clients are looking for an alternative market or alternative risk financing mechanism to support their needs. And how do we finance that risk, from that perspective?”

Taking that same approach, and really looking at being a trusted adviser and a consultant, is what Towle envisions with global risk management as well, being that trusted advisor and helping to design solutions that are appropriate and meaningful for Hylant’s clients, and helping to support them in order for them to focus on their day to day job, as a risk manager or an organisation.