From: Captive Insurance Times
Captives move to centre stage
The captive insurance market in 2025 saw an evolution that significantly outpaced initial industry projections, moving captives from niche instruments to strategic enablers of corporate and regional resilience. Experts agree that the year was defined by structural realignment rather than incremental growth, with captives proving remarkably sticky even as commercial rates eased.
Daniel Towle, president of Captive Insurance Companies Association (CICA), identified the United Kingdom’s recent approval to become a captive insurance domicile as one of the most impactful developments of the year. This structural momentum was accelerated by new French regulation, inspiring other European countries to revisit their frameworks. Marine Charbonnier, head of Captives and Facultatives Underwriting, APAC & Europe, AXA XL, concluded that captives had moved from the margin to the centre of corporate resilience in Europe, with companies now seeing captives as strategic enablers of long-term transformation.
The entrance of the UK as a domicile will help drive significant interest in European companies considering forming a captive.
Dan Towle, CICA President
Initial projections for 2025 were often conservative, largely viewing sustained growth as primarily a hard-market phenomenon that would slow as the commercial market softened. What transpired was fundamentally different. Ian-Edward Stafrace, chief strategy officer at Atlas Insurance PCC Limited, noted that once boards experienced the transparency and control a captive offers, they did not dismantle these structures simply because pricing improved, consolidating the captive’s role as a permanent risk-management tool.
