Are captives the answer? Do-it-yourself alternatives earn risk management market shares.

Claims, April, 2002 by Cummings, Kent J.; Hamilton, Thomas M.

A significant trend in the commercial insurance marker is the turn away from traditional insurance companies and the move toward alternative risk management vehicles such as self insurance, risk retention groups, and captive insurance companies.

As fluctuations of the market have raised the cost or diminished the availability of various lines of commercial insurance, more and more purchasers have turned to do-it-yourself alternatives. In April 2001, A.M. Best reported steady growth rates for captive insurance companies, between 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent over the past several years, with an acceleration in growth in 2000. By the end of 1999, the alternative insurance market comprised nearly 40 percent of the total commercial market in the United States, and...