About Us

Welcome to specandagg.com, a website that is designed to provide information to current and future self-insurers in an easy to follow format as well as providing listings of the service providers who are able to assist companies who wish to become self-insured.

There are many forms of self-insurance but all forms have a consistent quality. Self-Insurance involves a formal decision to retain risk rather than pass it to insurers. Whilst the end objective is to save premium and to enhance a company's financial performance, self-insurance differs from standard insurance programs in that it involves the company adopting many of the functions of an insurance company. Self-insurance requires a company to have a much greater awareness and incentive to improve its claims experience with the aim of passing the savings back to the company as well as making the workplace safer and more productive.

specandagg.com not only provides information for companies that are seeking to set up funds and trusts but also for larger companies and groups that wish to form their own insurance companies, either as captives or risk retention groups.

Who Should Use This Site?

specandagg.com provides an introduction to the most popular forms of self-insurance providing information for companies that wish to self-insure for the first time or for people wishing to understand the concept of self-insurance.

Whilst self-insurance is a seemingly complex world, there are many service providers that are able to advise self-insurers using approaches that have already been adopted by many companies. Each section provides a guide to initiating a self-insurance program as well as the service providers who can help.

specandagg.com will also be useful to service providers themselves who require interaction with other service providers in order to put the self-insured program together.

What is Specific and Aggregate?

Specific and aggregate is an essential part of any self-insurance program where the self-insurer is concerned about the potential of having to pay unusually high losses. By enabling companies to put a finite cap on their potential liabilities, this type of insurance allows many more companies to self-insure. The coverage and cost varies by class and customer but the basic parts are always the same.

Specific Coverage

Specific coverage protects self-insured funds, trusts, captive insurers and risk retention groups from large individual losses that can be attributed to a specific event. For employee benefits this might mean a major medical claim, such as an organ transplant, from a single person and for workers compensation it might mean a single accident or a roof collapse. Other examples would be a factory fire, an oil rig explosion or an automobile accident. Specific coverage normally applies after retention has been paid by the self-insured and removes any exposure to a specific loss above this amount. The self-insured can therefore be that its losses will be limited to the size of its retention and this retention is set according to the self-insurer's appetite for risk and the amount that it can afford to pay.

Aggregate Coverage

Aggregate coverage removes the potential for an unexpected series of specific events to affect a company's balance sheet. Whilst specific coverage removes the uncertainty of any large individual loss by restricting the amount that the self-insurer has to pay to a specific amount, aggregate coverage removes the uncertainty of a self-insurer having to pay a greater than expected number losses in any one period which would adversely affect its bottom line. Examples might include a greater than anticipate number of accidents in any one-year in the workplace or more than anticipated employees needing to go to hospital. Aggregate coverage is designed to take care of any fluctuations in normal loss experience and consequently the point at which a company can collect claims is set excess of a retention which is normally higher than the anticipated losses that the self-insurer should experience in any period. The amount of insurance provided is calculated to provide sufficient comfort to a company should it suffer losses that are significantly higher than anticipated.

SpecandAgg.com Ltd.

specificandaggregate.com and specandagg.com are owned by SpecandAgg.com Ltd. SpecandAgg.com Ltd is a private company and was founded by its Chief Executive Dominic Higham in March 2003. Mr Higham's previous roles included being a director in C.E.Heath's reinsurance division in the Lloyd's insurance market where he spent 20 years specializing in self-insurance and captive reinsurance. As well as managing SpecandAgg.com Mr Higham is founder and Chief Executive Officer of PatientChoice Ltd. PatientChoice is an award-winning alternative medical insurance plan for the UK market which contains many features typical to a self-insurance plan designed to deliver a valuable benefit at an affordable cost.

Enquiries regarding service provider listings, advertising and general contents of this site can be made to SpecandAgg.com Ltd, Finsgate, 5-7 Cranwood Street, London, EC1V 9EE, United Kingdom or by email to info@specandagg.com. The company welcomes input from outside parties and also welcomes articles which might be of interest to self-insurers.