A captive runs on an annual rhythm, with work in every month of it:
- Renewal and pricing. Policies reissue each year, with the actuary re-pricing from fresh loss data.
- Accounting. Ongoing books, reconciliations, and financial statements for an actual insurance company.
- Claims. Oversight of reporting, reserving, and the TPA where one handles claims.
- Compliance. Regulatory filings, the annual independent audit, the actuarial opinion, and board governance.
- Capital. Monitoring solvency and collateral so the captive stays comfortably inside its requirements.
That is the operational floor. The strategic layer above it is where performance comes from: reviewing whether retentions still fit as surplus grows, whether new lines belong in the program, and what the surplus itself should be doing. Captives that stall usually have the floor without the layer, running as set-it-and-forget-it policies rather than managed assets.
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