Business Insurance
Your business as its own insurance company
Captive insurance management gives qualifying businesses direct control over how they fund, manage, and recover from risk.
Captive insurance is an arrangement in which a business creates a separate, legally distinct insurance company to cover its own risks, rather than buying a policy from a commercial carrier. The business owns and funds that entity, collects premiums into it, and pays claims from it. Companies pursue this structure for several concrete reasons: commercial carriers won't cover certain exposures at an acceptable price, the business wants tighter control over its loss reserves, or the structure offers favorable tax treatment when built correctly. It requires meaningful scale and careful setup, and ongoing management is almost always handled with outside professional help.
What this coverage includes
Risk financing through an owned insurer
Instead of paying premiums to a third-party carrier, your business pays premiums into the captive it owns. Those funds sit in a dedicated reserve and pay claims as they arise. Over time, a well-run captive builds equity rather than sending premium dollars off to someone else's balance sheet. The business retains underwriting profit when losses stay low.
Coverage for exposures the standard market won't write
Commercial insurers decline or price out certain risks entirely: unusual product liability, industry-specific professional exposures, or high-frequency low-severity losses in a specialized trade. A captive can be structured to cover those gaps on terms the business itself sets. This is one of the most common reasons businesses investigate the structure in the first place.
Claims control and reserve management
With a traditional policy, claims go to the carrier and the carrier decides how and when to pay. With a captive, the business controls the claims process, sets reserve levels, and manages payouts directly. That removes a common friction point and gives finance leadership real-time visibility into loss costs rather than quarterly carrier reports.
Potential tax treatment on premiums
Premiums paid into a properly structured captive may qualify as deductible business expenses under IRS rules, while the reserves accumulate in a tax-advantaged vehicle. The specifics depend heavily on structure, jurisdiction, and the captive's size. A tax attorney and a qualified captive manager should both be part of any feasibility conversation. Bittick does not provide tax or legal advice, but we can connect you with managers who do.
Ongoing program management
A captive is a licensed insurance entity. It files regulatory reports, maintains capital requirements, and requires actuarial review of reserves. Most businesses that own a captive hire a third-party captive manager to handle administration, compliance, and annual filings. Bittick can help you evaluate whether captive management is the right structure and identify qualified managers suited to your program's size and domicile.
Pairs well with
Commercial General Liability
Most businesses pairing a captive with conventional coverage keep a commercial GL policy for standard third-party bodily injury and property damage claims. The captive often layers above or beside it for unusual exposures.
Learn more ›Commercial Umbrella
A captive handles the risks a carrier won't write, but high-limit excess coverage over standard lines still belongs in the overall program. An umbrella policy fills that vertical limit need without duplicating the captive structure.
Learn more ›Professional Liability (E&O)
Businesses that pursue captives for professional or technical risks still benefit from reviewing whether a dedicated E&O policy is more cost-efficient for certain claim types than absorbing all professional exposure into the captive.
Learn more ›Workers Compensation
Workers comp is one of the more common lines captive owners self-fund, particularly in Idaho and Texas businesses with stable, well-controlled loss histories. State law governs what is permissible, so carrier and captive roles need careful delineation.
Learn more ›Business Owners Policy (BOP)
Smaller operations exploring captive structures may still benefit from a BOP covering routine property and liability exposures while the captive handles outlier risks. It avoids routing every small claim through the captive's reserves.
Learn more ›What this coverage protects against
Common risks and how this coverage addresses them. Tap any scenario to expand.
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Carrier won't write a specialty exposure at a viable price
The risk
A mid-size Treasure Valley equipment rental company faces liability tied to a specific category of machinery that admitted carriers either exclude outright or price with a surcharge that wipes out the margin on every rental contract.
How this coverage helps
The company works with a captive manager to structure a single-parent captive that funds that specific exposure. Claims against the rental equipment liability go through the captive, and premiums stay inside the business rather than flowing to a carrier that never wanted the risk.
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Recouping good-year underwriting profit
The risk
A commercial contractor operating along the I-84 corridor has run clean loss years for a decade but gets repriced upward whenever the broader market hardens, because standard carriers pool results across all insureds rather than crediting individual performance.
How this coverage helps
A captive structure lets that contractor's own low-loss history work in its favor. Premiums paid into the captive build reserves that belong to the business. Clean years accumulate surplus the contractor can eventually access, rather than subsidizing other policyholders.
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Gaining visibility and control over the claims process
The risk
A regional employer with multiple Idaho and Texas locations finds that slow carrier claims handling ties up operations: injured workers wait weeks for approvals, subrogation opportunities get missed, and finance leadership works from delayed loss runs.
How this coverage helps
By funding workers compensation through a captive, the employer manages reserves in real time, controls the claims handler selection, and sets service standards. Loss data flows directly to leadership rather than arriving months after the fact.
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Covering a product liability exposure the admitted market won't touch
The risk
A manufacturer based in the San Antonio metro area produces a component used in a specialized industrial application. Admitted carriers either exclude the end-use category or require an exclusion that leaves the company exposed on its most profitable product line.
How this coverage helps
A captive lets the manufacturer retain that specific product liability exposure on terms it controls, fund reserves commensurate with its actual loss history, and avoid either going bare or accepting a policy that excludes the core risk.
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Managing the administrative burden of running a captive entity
The risk
A business that has set up or is considering a captive quickly realizes it involves actuarial filings, domicile-specific regulatory requirements, annual audits, and capital maintenance obligations that sit outside the core business team's expertise.
How this coverage helps
Bittick helps businesses evaluate third-party captive managers suited to the program's domicile and size. We do not manage captives ourselves, but we work alongside captive managers as part of a client's broader coverage team.
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Evaluating whether a captive is actually the right structure
The risk
Captive insurance is not right for every business. It requires sufficient premium volume to make the overhead worthwhile, stable and predictable loss patterns, and the organizational capacity to treat an insurance entity as a serious subsidiary.
How this coverage helps
A conversation with Bittick starts with a straightforward feasibility discussion. If a captive makes sense given your revenue, risk profile, and operational capacity, we help you take the next step. If it does not, we tell you that and focus on the conventional market instead.