Retaining versus transferring risk: Data focused captives can be complementary buffer to plug emerging risk coverage gaps

By Katie Scott2026-04-27T15:00:00

Risk experts predict that captives will continue to grow in popularity as a tool to make hard to write risks ‘palatable’ for the insurance market – particularly during hard market cycles

Yesteryear’s hard insurance market cycle drove “noise” in the risk management community around the use of captive models as a way to keep a handle on escalating premium prices amid shrunken capacity in certain lines of business – however, today’s usage of these formats is more centred on plugging “unique” and sector specific coverage gaps that insurers perhaps do not understand or do not have data around that can support accurate pricing.

This was the consensus among industry experts participating in a panel discussion – entitled ‘Expert Arena – Captives and ART’ – at the Axco Global Insurance Summit on 16 April 2026 in London.

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