Walk me through exactly how the calculator works and what I say when I show it to a client.
The calculator is designed to do one thing. Show your client what they've been leaving on the table. That's it. You're not explaining how a captive works. You're not presenting a proposal. You're just putting a number in front of them that makes them lean in and ask what comes next.
Here's how it works.
You need four numbers. What is your client paying annually for workers' comp? What are they paying for general liability? What are they paying for commercial auto? And what have their average annual losses looked like over the last five years? That's the whole conversation. They can give you those numbers off the top of their head in most cases. You don't need their policies. You don't need their carrier information. You don't need a single document from their current agent.
You plug those numbers in, and the calculator shows them what they would have kept had they been in a captive over the relevant period. It models their underwriting profit based on their actual loss history. The output is a dollar figure that represents money that went to a carrier and never came back.
When you show it to them, you don't lead with captives. You lead with the number.
Something like this: Based on what you just told me, if you had been in a different insurance structure over the last five years, you could have kept roughly this much. I want to show you how that works. Take the number, circle it, and say, "Are you interested in understanding how this is possible?"
That's the whole first meeting. You're not selling a captive. You're not explaining the mechanics. You're just showing them the gap between what they've been doing and what's possible and asking if they want to know more.
The clients who see that number and shrug are telling you something. Either they don't believe it, which means more education is needed, or they genuinely don't care about what they've been leaving behind, which tells you something about whether they're the right fit. The clients who lean in are telling you something, too. Those are the conversations worth continuing.
Use the calculator before you ask for anything else. It does more to motivate a prospect than any explanation of how captives work.
It's always your client. Never ours.
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