New captive product for Californian construction

California-based commercial insurance brokerage Steve Muehler is launching a captive insurance product for local construction businesses. Customised to companies’ needs, it will provide an alternative to standard “cookie-cutter” Insurance Services Organization commercial general liability policies, according to the broker.

“With our new Captive Insurance product for California construction businesses, the business owner can insure their risks, utilise more comprehensive coverages, and mitigate for serious financial and operational losses,” said Steve Muehler, senior managing member of Steve Muehler Companies.

“Also, unlike with traditional policies, if there is undistributed earned surplus, which essentially means there are no claims made in a given year, the funds can be distributed as a dividend or as a secured loan back to the operating company. With our Captive Insurance Program, premium costs are lower simply because, in the commercial markets, ‘special coverages’ tend to be more expensive.”

At the end of August, the business announced that it would launch an alternative risk transfer market nationwide in the Spring of 2022.

“We plan over the next few months to implement our already announced market for captives but expand that to include life insurance-linked securitisation, longevity risk transfer and some other alternative risk financing techniques that we are still working on,” Muehler said at the time.