New Group Captive Facility Launched in Iowa Focuses on Delivery Firms
- Innovative Captive Strategies and insurance brokerage Holmes Murphy & Associates, both based in Waukee, Iowa, have launched Bluestem Insurance Group, a group captive facility.
- Bluestem began writing its first business in September and covers property casualty insurance, including workers’ compensation. Its first protected series, Paceline, focuses on last-mile delivery operators, and 12 companies have joined so far. Stephani Manning, president of Innovative Captive Strategies, said the model lets mostly mid-sized employer groups move from “renting their insurance to owning their insurance.”
- Iowa is the newest U.S. captive domicile, after legislation passed in 2023. The law created a temporary premium tax waiver to attract non-life captives to redomesticate, a regulatory framework for life captive reinsurance companies and a $100,000 minimum capital and surplus for protected cell captives.
- The law also lets protected cells form as LLCs or series LLCs, allows special purpose captives to form as reciprocal insurers and clarifies that captives may use parametric insurance.
Court Reinstates Coal Miner’s 40% Disability Award
- The Kentucky Supreme Court reinstated in full a workers’ compensation award for an injured coal miner, reversing portions of an appeals court ruling that had required reconsideration of the impairment ratings for his neck, shoulders and hands.
- The high court based the reinstatement in O’Bannon v. Muhlenberg County Coal Co. on a physician’s 40% whole-person impairment rating for the worker, despite questions whether the doctor had followed medical guidelines when making the assessment.
- The coal miner filed a claim in 2024 alleging repetitive physical labor caused cumulative injuries to his neck, back, shoulders, knees and hands. An administrative law judge awarded permanent partial disability and medical benefits and applied a statutory multiplier because he could no longer perform underground mining work. The Workers’ Compensation Board upheld the award.
- The appeals court had found the physician’s 10% cervical spine rating fell outside the ranges in the American Medical Association’s Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment and required separate ratings for each shoulder and hand. The Supreme Court held that medical assessments need only generally conform to the AMA Guides, not strictly follow every specified percentage.
- The court noted that although the 10% cervical rating fell between two categories in the guidelines, no competing medical expert challenged it or showed it was medically unsound. It also rejected separate ratings for each shoulder and hand, finding no medical evidence that the injuries differed in severity between the left and right sides.