Strategic Risk Solutions (SRS) helps BeneRe manage compliance, financial reporting, meeting coordination, and much more – which lets us focus more on our clients.
Key Takeaways
- Captive managers work with pure captives and risk-sharing structures to manage the behind-the-scenes responsibilities, like compliance and financial reporting
- BeneRe works with SRS, the world’s largest independent captive manager and consultant
- SRS delivers top-tier services so BeneRe can focus on operating the captive and serving clients
BeneRe couldn’t provide the level of service we deliver to clients without the help of our captive manager, which coordinates logistics, ensures compliance, and handles many other essential tasks.
BeneRe works with Strategic Risk Solutions (SRS), the world’s largest independent captive manager and consultant. The company provides custom solutions to meet its clients’ needs and has been in operation for over 25 years. SRS manages more than 900 risk-bearing entities, including single-parent captives, group captives, risk retention groups, and other insurance structures.
This post will be devoted to highlighting SRS and why BeneRe loves working with them.
What does SRS do?
SRS provides management and advisory services for captives. Captives are either “pure” captives or risk-sharing structures:
- Pure captives: Their risks emanate from a single economic family – a corporation, nonprofit, etc.
- Risk-sharing structures: Multiple economically distinct entities join together to achieve a better result than they can individually, such as in a group captive.
Captive owners typically do not have the in-house expertise to deal with tax filings, audits, regulatory filings, and other financial and compliance duties. SRS steps in to provide all of those back-end tasks so captive owners can focus more on clients. Instead of spending time and manpower on day-to-day treasury management and operational processes, they instead lean on SRS to do those jobs while they focus on customer service and program development.
The core functions of SRS on a day-to-day basis include these three areas:
- Financial reporting
- Governance and compliance
- General management services
SRS fills the core role for captives in those three discipline areas. Captives can then focus on running the business, not spending hours and hours on back-office tasks. The captive program manager is then free to take the lead in terms of the brand, industry education, and other client-facing responsibilities, like creating plan strategy and supporting the underwriting process.
Here is a more complete list of captive manager responsibilities:
- Maintaining books and records of the captive.
- Ensuring compliance with all domicile regulations.
- Providing regular financial and operational reports to the captive owner.
- Supporting annual income tax returns and making premium tax filings.
- Coordinating audit and actuarial reviews.
- Running board meetings.
- Facilitating domicile examinations, typically every three to five years.
- Monitoring compliance with established policies and procedures.
SRS essentially makes it possible for captives like BeneRe to better serve their clients by handling all the back-end responsibilities.
Why BeneRe trusts SRS
We benefit from the fact that the industry already knows and trusts SRS. Because SRS is a recognizable, known commodity and leader in the captive industry, large employers often already have SRS handling their single-parent captive. So, they’re already familiar with SRS’ sterling reputation, they know their leadership team, and they trust that everything will be done right the first time.
SRS allows BeneRe to deliver a consistently positive client experience. With that kind of service, you never know they’re there, and that’s what we need. Reports are done right, and compliance is always handled correctly. Regulators are confident in the validity of requests to release dividends since they know everything was handled appropriately by people who truly specialize in this work.
Put simply, SRS helps BeneRe make all the technical stuff look easy by managing the regulatory requirements behind the scenes. This way, BeneRe can keep our focus on service delivery.
Core services create some of the biggest issues for companies if they’re not handled properly by the captive manager. What’s great about SRS is that this is all they do — they’re not owned by other entities in the industry, like carriers, brokers, or even banks. Their independence ensures a laser-focus on providing these specific services.
SRS is also effective because of its heavy emphasis on hiring, training, and keeping the right people. They intentionally locate their people so they can meet face to face with clients and provide guidance on any local regulations and jurisdictions in each client’s respective domicile.
They place a heavy emphasis on both staffing and service. Teams undergo regular process audits to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and these best practices permeate the whole firm.
SRS also has a reputation for supporting innovation. They were the first captive manager to put employee benefits, specifically group life & disability, into captives to help broaden the coverage that employers can offer and do it on a more cost-effective basis.
How SRS helps BeneRe make a difference
BeneRe is a turn-key solution to provide better, broader supplemental benefits to employees. The focus is on getting voluntary lines of coverage and products to employees on a cost-effective basis. BeneRe disrupts the financing of these programs, so employers and employees can maximize the benefit from what they’re paying for. SRS makes it all possible by taking care of the back end of things.
In this model, program profits are reinvested in a health and wellness fund for your employees. Employees can see major cost savings and human resources departments can augment their benefits budgets without having to ask the CFO for more funding. Both HR and finance professionals are surprised when they learn how BeneRe’s model works and how simple the process is. We can show them our successful track record and that we only partner with the best and most recognizable insurance companies. They know they can trust us as a business partner.
BeneRe and SRS essentially improve the existing supplemental insurance structure and both employees and employers realize major benefits. BeneRe appreciates that SRS keeps things moving smoothly.
Reach out to BeneRe today for a complimentary financial analysis of in-force programs.