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In Part 1 of my recap from this year's Global Captive Congress in London, I focused on strategy and the growing push to make the captive the first question in any risk program. But strategy only gets you so far. Once an organization decides to put its captive at the center, it has to decide where that captive lives and how it is structured.

That was the other big thread running through the congress. Owners today have more domicile options than ever, from Lloyd's captive syndicates to a new UK regime to a rapidly maturing US market, and more of them are asking whether their captive belongs closer to home. This piece walks through those sessions and what they mean for owners weighing their options.

Inside a Lloyd's Captive Syndicate

C.I.'s own Nate Reznicek moderated this panel. For many in the room, particularly those of us working mostly in US domiciles, this session was a useful look under the hood. The concept is more familiar than it sounds. At Lloyd's, syndicates take on and insure risk while Lloyd's itself provides the marketplace. In a captive syndicate, the syndicate simply is the captive.

The structure has its own vocabulary, though. A syndicate is not a legal entity. It is a group of underwriters backed by a corporate member, and in a captive arrangement the parent provides capital through a UK corporate member. Risk comes in through Lloyd's licenses, or through a fronting insurer where one is still needed, and the syndicate can pass risk on to reinsurers.

The managing agent plays a role much like a captive manager, with one key difference: it is a regulated entity in its own right. Under an aligned model, the managing agent also has a financial interest in the business. The model presented ran several segregated captive portfolios under one managing agency, sharing the underwriting, claims, finance, compliance, and reporting infrastructure.

A few other pieces round out the picture. Coverholders can bind business on a syndicate's behalf. Funds at Lloyd's is the capital the member posts to support underwriting. The Central Fund acts as a mutualized fund of last resort if both the member's and the syndicate's assets are exhausted. And a protected cell vehicle offers an additional route to capital.

So who is this built for? The structure shown on stage was aimed at group enterprises looking to retain risks from one or more jurisdictions. For a multinational, that is where the model gets interesting. Writing directly through Lloyd's licenses across many countries can simplify a program that would otherwise need fronting arrangements in each market. For a domestic US business with a straightforward program, a traditional captive with fronting paper will often still be the simpler and more cost-effective answer. As with any domicile decision, the right choice depends on where the risks sit and what the program needs to accomplish.

The UK Opens Its Doors

Given that we were meeting in London, the update on the UK's new domestic captive regime drew plenty of interest. The message was encouraging. Regulators and the market are working closely to make the launch smooth, with a goal of licensing captives in roughly four to six weeks. If that holds, it would put the UK on competitive footing with established domiciles when it comes to speed to market.

Speed matters more than it might seem. A captive is often formed in response to a specific pressure point, such as a renewal that went badly or a line where capacity dried up. A long licensing process can mean missing the renewal the captive was meant to solve. A domicile that can move quickly, without cutting corners on oversight, gives owners a real reason to stay close to home.

For UK-headquartered organizations that have historically looked offshore or to EU hubs, the questions to watch as the regime launches are practical ones: how proportionate the capital and reporting requirements turn out to be, how the regime treats smaller and first-time captives, and how quickly a local service ecosystem of managers, actuaries, and advisors grows around it. The US experience, covered next, suggests those last points matter as much as the legislation itself.

Why the US Market Keeps Growing

As an American in a room full of European and UK practitioners, I found this session especially interesting. The presenters summed up the US story by highlighting how the States have done an great job at building a captive ecosystem.

That framing rings true. Industry data shown at the event put the number of active captives with US-based parents at just over 3,000, with insurance and healthcare leading by sector and Vermont, Cayman, Utah, and Bermuda leading by domicile.

The explanation for that growth starts with regulation. Because US captive law is built state by state, states compete for business through modern statutes and responsive regulators. That competition gives owners real choice, and success in turn attracts managers, actuaries, attorneys, auditors, and tax advisors. Industry and state associations then do the quiet work of normalizing captive use and building expertise, so awareness keeps compounding.

The US also offers owners four distinct pathways (single parent, group, cell, and risk retention groups), which lets the structure fit the owner rather than the other way around. Workers' compensation has long been the foundation of US captives, as a large, data-rich, employer-funded risk. More recently, medical stop loss has become a major driver as healthcare severity pushes employee benefits into risk finance. Add in market volatility, exclusions, and capacity pressure, and it is not hard to see why formations continue.

Survey results presented at the session backed this up:

Industry data and survey results as presented at Global Captive Congress 2026. Survey figures are directional, not a census of all formations.

From where I sit, the group captive figure stands out. Group and cell structures are often the on-ramp for middle-market companies that are too small to justify a single-parent captive on their own. That accessibility is a big part of why the US market keeps widening, and it is exactly the kind of proportionate entry point the presenters encouraged UK and European regulators to build.

The Rise of Captive Nationalism

The final session I attended looked at a trend that ties neatly back to the UK update: more owners are asking whether their captive belongs closer to home. For now, offshore and established EU hubs still hold the largest share in most markets, but domestic domiciles are clearly part of the conversation.

Industry data as presented at Global Captive Congress 2026, excluding cells.

The numbers tell an interesting story. Canadian owners still lean heavily on Barbados, yet nearly a quarter of their captives are already domiciled in Alberta or British Columbia, showing that domestic options can win real market share once they exist. French and German owners, by contrast, have concentrated in Luxembourg, which offers an established EU base, while only a small share sit in their home countries. Chinese owners are split between Hong Kong and onshore China, with a notable share in Barbados as well.

The case for a home-based captive came down to a few things. Domestic options are becoming more attractive, and the barriers for first-time owners are coming down, though the drivers look different from region to region. A captive at home can also be easier to explain. It fits more naturally within an organization's broader risk and governance framework, gives boards, CFOs, and auditors more comfort, and supports transparency and reputation goals. The trade-offs are real, from cost and operational demands to shifting relationships across the captive and reinsurance markets, but the direction of travel is hard to miss.

Closing Thoughts

I left London with the sense that the captive industry has quietly crossed a threshold. Owners have more domiciles, more structures, and more ways than ever to put a captive at the center of their program. With the UK regime on the horizon and home-based captives gaining ground, competition for that business is only going to grow. The organizations best placed to benefit will be the ones that stop treating the captive as an afterthought and start treating it as the first question.

Taken together with the strategy sessions from Part 1, the message from this year's congress is clear. Decide what you are willing to retain, put the captive first, and then choose the domicile and structure that best fit where your risks live and where your organization is headed.