A Salute to the Friendly Society Restored and those that Made it Possible
When former governor Jim Hodges signed the captive law in June 2000, a small group was invited to the historic event. Because John O’Brien had already filed letters of incorporation for the first captive management company in South Carolina, he was among the select invitees that were to be part of the new captive insurance industry in the domicile.
Then-SCDOI Director Ernie Csiszar’s listed three essentials for a successful captive domicile. The first was that South Carolina would need the right legislation and regulatory components supplemented with a qualified and forward-thinking alternative risk regulatory team. Secondly, South Carolina would need to be a place where business could be conducted in a pleasurable atmosphere. Csiszar’s third and final stated essential was that South Carolina would need to create sound infrastructure.
Years later, we can see that those early efforts paved the way for what is now a progressive and top competitor with other domiciles. In O'Brien's view, South Carolina has met the challenges of providing a consistent high-quality regulatory response and oversight to an aggressively growing captive industry.
South Carolinians feel confident they have achieved the vision of making South Carolina a pleasurable place to do business. “The importance of an attractive domicile cannot be overstated when appealing to potential captive. Form must follow function”, said O’Brien. He believed that the coastal Lowcountry already had a lot of to offer visitors in terms of hotels and shopping, the history and architecture, beaches, sailing, great golf, the finest resorts on the East Coast and all accompanied with the good manners and friendliness that are associated with South Carolina.
For O’Brien, it made good sense for the captive industry to take advantage of and to enhance the appeal of the available services and amenities that were already being successfully administered by the local hospitality and tourism industry.
“Because of the support of the local governmental bodies we are finding that we are indeed becoming a world class captive domicile,” said O’Brien.
