Face-to-face VCIA meetings ‘invaluable’ during hard market: Hylant

The 2022 Vermont Captive Insurance Association (VCIA) annual conference has come at a vitally important point for the US captive market, according to Anne-Marie Towle (pictured), global captive solutions leader at Hylant.

The 2022 VCIA meeting is the first time in three years that people have met in person at this event; there will be a buzz about the conference as a result, Towle said to Captive International.

This face-to-face contact will be particularly important as delegates grapple with the nuances and challenges of the global hard market, she said. She expects captive owners and captive prospects to have much to discuss, from market opportunities to how they can finance risk in their captives to better access of the reinsurance markets.

“The ability to have face-to-face conversations, discuss programmes, make changes right there and then – all of that is invaluable in today’s market, because many experienced captive owners are extremely interested in how they can make changes and use their captive to its fullest extent,” Towle explained.

“Equally, organisations who are new to captives are trying to better understand their captive, secure direct access to some of these markets and also the regulators, captive managers and consultants.”

According to Towle, it’s hard to predict when the hard market will end. Whilst there have been slowdowns in hardening at different times in various lines, she underlined that there are still challenges out there in the world. She thinks that the hard market will continue until 2024 and maybe beyond in certain lines of risk.

“We still have the Ukraine-Russia situation, we have supply chain issues coming out of China still, the pandemic hasn’t really gone away, it seems to be becoming endemic rather than a pandemic, so how do we live our lives in a different way?” Towle asked.

“Risk managers and the way they operate is going to be dramatically different from the way it’s been in the past. That’s an important question: how do you operate in an ever-changing world? It’s not that it didn’t change before, but it’s certainly very different now after a one in a hundred-years-event, as well as supply chain issues that have come to the surface that some people had never even considered.”

Despite all of this, Towle is looking forward to the conference. “The VCIA conference will also give us here at Hylant an opportunity to meet with regulators, talk to service providers and meet with others in the captive market. My team and I are excited to be attending and I think that it’s a wonderful opportunity for us to continue to be seen as a thought leader in the captive industry.”