Joseph Simmons and Jake Smedley, two risk, insurance and healthcare management (RIHM) students at the Fox School of Business, were recently awarded second-place in the Captive Insurance Company Association (CICA) Essay Contest.
Captives are owned by the company that they insure. It’s a company-specific insurer as it provides insurance services only to its owner. This is different from a company like Allstate, which provides insurance to both individuals and private companies.
CICA has run for over 40 years providing knowledgeable leadership practices that advocates on behalf of the captive insurance industry.
In their presentation, the seniors, who are also roommates, presented their recommendations for using a captive insurance company to provide options for a classic car dealership and its customers. Classic cars often require different insurance than traditional cars due to their rarity and upkeep expenses. In the scenario Simmons and Smedley created, auto body customers complained that traditional insurance methods did not cover enough of their classic vehicles and were too expensive.
To fix this problem, the auto body shop—Simmons and Smedley—created a captive insurance company to offer coverage to its customers that tailored to their individual needs. The duo’s proposal for the company was then presented in front of a panel of CICA Essay Contest judges.
Smedley says that while he was thrilled with an acknowledgment of their hard work.
“At the end of the day, we all learned some things through a process,” he says. “Writing an essay didn’t come naturally for us, but it was nice to be able to sit down and research a topic that we don’t really touch on in classes and to come out in second. It just shows that our hard work actually did pay off in the end.”
Smedley started his Temple coursework as a biomedical engineering major before switching to RIHM, and after his intro to risk class with professor R.B. Drennan, he knew it was the right move.
“Looking back I don’t think that I would have done it any other way,” he says. “I know the risk, insurance and healthcare management department really trains its students for the workforce. And that was the best experience that I had to set me up for the job that I wanted.”
Simmons and Smedley will graduate this month with bachelor’s degrees in RIHM. Simmons accepted a position at reThought Insurance remotely and Smedley will be working at Marsh, an insurance broker in New York City.
Originally published at Fox.Temple.edu