Kansas enhances captive insurance legislation

Kansas governor Jeff Colyer has approved a bill that updates the state's captive insurance statutes and allows certain captive insurance companies in the State of Kansas.

Senate Bill 410 was approved on Thursday, April 12, 2018, and allows for association and branch captives, along with special purpose insurance captives.

An association captive, also known as group captives, are captive insurance companies that are owned by an association or member of a common industry. A branch captive is a unit of an existing offshore captive that has been licensed onshore to transact business of insurance in the state in which it is domiciled. And finally an SPI captive are captive reinsurers used by other insurers to securitise risk.

Ken Selzer, commissioner of insurance for the Kansas Insurance Department, previously provided a testimony in support of the bill, noting that many states have already updated their captive laws and have received overwhelming and bipartisan support by their legislative bodies.

Section 39 of the bill amends the captive requirements for maintaining capital and surplus from $100,000 to $250,000 for pure captives and from $200,000 to $500,000 for association captives.

A further change to the legislation requires each captive insurance company not in existence on January 1, 2018, to pay to the commissioner a non-refundable fee of $10,000.