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By CYRIL TUOHY, managing editor of Risk & Insurance®

Karin Landry, the new chairwoman of the Captive Insurance Companies Association (CICA), said her organization is looking to double its membership to about 1,000 members with the help of new outreach initiatives.

"We'll be coming out with a whole new set of initiatives later this year, and I think we'll definitely be kicking it up a notch," said Landry, who was elected chairwoman at CICA's annual gathering in March.

THE YOUTH TARGET

Those initiatives include creating captive insurance groups and broadcasting the latest CICA goings-on on popular social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

With the Millennial generation quickly filling the professional ranks, added Landry, there's not a moment to lose in reaching them in ways with which they are most familiar--over the Internet.

For many Millennials, and even for adults of the previous generation, Generation X, the Web is the medium that matters most, hooked as they are on the wireless world of instantaneous information.

For Millennials, a group of young adults more than 70 million strong born between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s according to futurists, face-to-face interaction means Facebook-to-Facebook interaction.

"The Millennials think differently and more cooperatively," said Landry, herself the mother of a daughter recently entered into the professional ranks.

Reaching out to Millennials represents a challenge for trade organizations like CICA with a membership skewing toward baby boomers, added Landry, who is also managing partner of the Spring Consulting Group in Boston.

Insurance industry organizations, whose memberships are based mainly on baby boomers, a generation born from 1946 to 1965, are finding their oldest members edging past 60 and thinking about retirement.

The time has come, therefore, for groups like CICA to make inroads into the fresh blood coming up the ranks.

THE TWO FRONTS

CICA, Landry said, has to move on two fronts at once: maintain its current audience while reaching out to a potential new audience.

Landry will receive the support of CICA Vice Chairman John Svoboda, president of the Denver-based risk retention group National Home Insurance Co., and CICA Secretary/Treasurer Dirk Helm, vice president of Sierra Land Group Inc. of Glendale, Calif., both of whom were also elected to their respective positions in March.

Reaching out to a younger audience using the Internet medium isn't the only way for CICA to broaden its membership.

Other initiatives include creating more internal board committees responsible for strategic planning and technology initiatives, and hiring a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

"We're planning a bigger role in keeping a sharper eye on bills coming up on the docket," said Landry.

Captive insurance companies, said Landry, are global financial vehicles, and CICA has recognized that by co-sponsoring the Luxembourg Rendezvous, an international industry event.

CICA also solicited input from the Cayman Islands and Guernsey, both vibrant captive insurance domiciles, in drafting its latest best practices document, which was also released in March at CICA's annual conference.

March 22, 2010

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