Arizona, Utah Agree To Joint Western Region Conference

NU Online News Service, Oct. 12, 12:54 p.m. EDT

Efforts to create a regional meeting format for captive insurance companies is seeing results with Arizona and Utah agreeing to form the Western Region Captive Insurance Conference (WRCIC) for 2010.

Joel Chansky, actuarial consultant, Milliman Inc., and Lee Filener, assistant vice president, Marsh, are 2010 co-chairs of the Arizona Captive Insurance Association (AzCIA). In their conference committee report, they noted the necessary agreements are being circulated for signature and that Arizona and Utah have verbally committed to a joint conference.

The first regional conference is scheduled for April 5-8, 2010 at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, the report said.

At this point, according to the report, the captive domiciles of Hawaii, Montana and Nevada have opted to "go it on their own, but, hopefully, will join in the regional event sometime in the future."

Mr. Chansky told NU Online News Service that some of the domiciles, already making plans for an upcoming conference, felt 2010 was too early to commit to.

He said he believes one conference would attract a larger number of attendees and service providers. "One and one equals three--where you used to get 100 attendees to each meeting, if you glue two of them together you might get 300."

He added, "I think service providers would like it. And as it keeps building and building it will become more popular."

He noted that certain issues affect all domiciles in the United States, such as federal taxes and regulation, which could be addressed to all attendees. Individual domicile issues could be discussed in breakout sessions.

Attendance at the Vermont Captive Insurance Association annual conference in August was down 18 percent, the report said--emphasizing the need for a single, joint conference for the Western U.S.

The conference co-chairs asked for volunteers and ideas for presentations and to help organize and execute the conference.