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Mark Bakker is a qualified chartered accountant (South Africa) and a member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Cayman Islands Institute of Professional Accountants. He obtained a BSc in 2008 and a postgraduate diploma in accounting in 2009, both at the University of Cape Town.

He completed his three-year training contract at Deloitte in Johannesburg in the corporate audit department followed by a brief secondment at Deloitte in Portland, Oregon. He returned to Deloitte Johannesburg in the advisory department on a consulting basis, but felt he needed to be elsewhere in the world. An initial 18-month spell with KPMG in the Cayman Islands led to joining USA Risk Group there as an account manager. 

He stayed, being now team leader. He is responsible for a portfolio of captive insurance companies directly and through oversight of the account managers on his team. This role serves both domestic and international clients and includes, but is not limited to, financial reporting, treasury management, corporate record management, regulatory compliance and serving as conduit between the various stakeholders and service providers of the captive as well as industry regulators.

If I’m being honest – with a bit of luck. Back in 2013, I’d done a bit of travelling around the US and surrounding areas after completing a secondment in Portland, Oregon. One stop was the Cayman Islands. After returning to South Africa, I felt my interests lay elsewhere and wanted to see what else the world held. I had a couple of friends who were working at Big Four audit firms in Cayman and thought that may be a good place to start. It was a coin toss between the captive insurance or funds of the audit department – and captive insurance it was. KPMG helped facilitate my move to USA Risk Group. Twelve years later I am grateful still to be in captive insurance at USA Risk Group and have not looked back.

Now one of its significant strengths may also be tied in with one of its most significant challenges. The captive industry at its core is people orientated. Ultimately, we are talking about various stakeholders and service providers collaborating to find, implement, operate and monitor optimal alternative risk financing solutions in regulated industries – and all the mechanics that go with it. Therein also lies the reward – a job with the opportunity to be flexible, multi-dimensional and allow you to play to your strengths. 

Captive insurance is a fairly specialised industry and the extent of the specialisation is characterised by the knowledge, experience, skills and development of those who work in it – particularly for a long time. The challenge would therefore be the transferral of the knowledge, experience, skills and development with the passage of time, especially in the face of exponentially increasing technological advancements.

Although the industry is specialised, the big draw card for young people is that it has many facets that require and can accommodate skilled people – and there is no doubt demand for them, particularly in the current growing market, exists. Once you enter the industry, there is significant room for growth and opportunities to utilise your strengths while maintaining a reasonable work-life balance. As with any industry though, your success will likely be tied to what you put in. It is testament to the industry if you look at the people who have been in it for many years; all are still loving it while leaving a legacy behind.

The captive insurance industry is by no means immune to developments in the rest of the world. Global factors such as (but certainly not limited to) inflation, AI, politics, regulations and wars all affect it, directly or indirectly, and impact the products or lines of coverage being insured and the viability thereof eg. traditional lines such as med-mal, workers’ comp or other property and casualty lines versus esoteric coverages. In recent years, a relatively hard commercial insurance market has resulted in sizeable growth in the captive insurance market. 

A significant challenge for all players in the market has been capturing enough of that growth either to implement a sustainable risk financing solution that provides profitability and risk management control in the case of a client or captive owner/s, or increasing one’s client base while maintaining the same high level of service in the case of captive insurance managers or other service providers. Markets have been fairly volatile in recent years, much of it based on unforeseen factors such as Covid – so if markets move the other way, are organisations and players positioned to a point sustainable enough to see them through to the next period of growth?

People measure success and happiness in different ways. I see them as mutually inclusive. Captive management is a conduit for both and as long as that is the case, I am happy to be a part of it. Also important though are the people you work with and I am lucky to be surrounded by people who promote both success and happiness too!