831B

 Conventional insurance rates are often volatile   831b    and unpredictable, and conventional insurers are prone to deny valid claims by exaggerating petty technicalities. Also, although business insurance premiums are generally deductible, once they are paid to a conventional outside insurer, they are gone forever.

A captive insurance company efficiently insures risk in various ways, such as through customized insurance policies, favorable "wholesale" rates from reinsurers, and pooled risk. Captive companies are well suited for insuring risk that would otherwise be uninsurable. Most businesses have conventional "retail" insurance policies for obvious risks, but remain exposed and subject to damages and loss from numerous other risks (i.e., they "self insure" those risks). A captive company can write customized policies for a business's peculiar insurance needs and negotiate directly with reinsurers. A CIC is particularly well-suited to issue business casualty policies, that is, policies that cover business losses claimed by a business and not involving third-party claimants. For example, a business might insure itself against losses incurred through business interruptions arising from weather, labor problems or computer failure.

As noted above, an 831(b) CIC is exempt from taxes on up to $1.2 million of premium income annually. As a practical matter, a CIC makes economic sense when its annual receipt of premiums is about $300,000 or more. Also, a business's total payments of insurance premiums should not exceed 10 percent of its annual revenues. A group of businesses or professionals having similar or homogeneous risks can form a multiple-parent captive (or group captive) insurance company and/or join a risk retention group (RRG) to pool resources and risks.