Molly Maynard, chief financial officer at Nashville-based IWLA-member company M & W Logistics Group, Inc., understands the benefits of being part of the IWLA Insurance Captive. M & W joined the captive in 2006 and Maynard reports that the benefits have far exceeded what she and the CEO originally expected: “When we first signed up it was like a foreign concept; I think we understood about 15 percent of the captive program,” says Maynard.

For many IWLA members, the captive may be confusing. Here’s the lowdown: The captive allows IWLA members whose safety record and insurance premiums meet certain criteria to join with similar organizations as part of the IWLA-IC.

Maynard, now chairman of the IWLA-IC Finance and Audit Committee, now knows a lot about captives, specifically, the benefits of belonging.

Safety comes first in the captive. Safety is an important concept in the warehouse-based third party logistics industry, because owners have so much to lose in unsafe working environments. “We have always been safe and I’m assuming that’s why we were selected to join the captive to begin with,” says Maynard. But captive members take safety into high gear. “The members of the captive hold each other accountable for staying safe. We are very cognizant of the watch list,” Maynard says.

Captive members must have solid safety records to join the IWLA-IC, and these must be maintained. The captive sets competitive annual premium rates based on safety and compliance. When members are not maintaining high risk-control scores, when they file claims, or when they miss the mandatory annual safety trainings, they enter the watch list. Those on the list are given one year to correct their behavior. During that time, they receive additional attention from other captive members and from the insurance providers.

Safety and risk education flows freely. The watch list is not the only attempt to educate and promote safety across captive membership. There are several events and education sessions throughout the year that are complimentary for safety and operations employees from captive-member companies to attend. In addition, the insurance providers offer many other resources. “There is a risk control meeting, a Safety & Risk Conference and two board meetings,” says Maynard.

But it’s also the informal education during these events that Maynard finds valuable. “There are a lot of idea sharing that goes on among committees, and lots of older members tend to educate the new members on how to handle things in the captive,” she says. She often looks to fellow captive members for advice, which she did while attending the July 2013 IWLA-IC board meeting in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Peer-to-peer motivation hits everyone’s bottom line. “The captive is a very well run organization, with the distinction that we’re not paid employees of the captive, rather members have a vested interest in the captive’s success and members’ success,” Maynard says. Because renewals are based on a collective safety effort, the members have safety and risk engrained in their daily mindset. “We got a great renewal this year, and the policy distribution was great—we will continue to participate in the captive program and keep safety as a top priority,” says Maynard.