Swerma’s Rodert promoted to group captive and insurance director

Karl-Johan Rodert, president of Swerma and the Swedish representative on Ferma’s European Captive Committee, has been promoted to captive and insurance group director at Autoliv, the US-domiciled, Swedish-headquartered automotive safety supplier.

Rodert, who joined the company in July 2021, told Commercial Risk Europe that his new role means he is heading the insurance department for the group and reports directly to group general counsel.

He remains in charge of all lines of insurance purchased at group level and is also in charge of the group’s loss prevention programme, with external audits performed by external risk engineer consultants. Rodert is in charge of the management of Autoliv’s captive based in Utah, for which he will take up the role of president.

In interview with Commercial Risk ahead of the Ferma Seminar in Antwerp, Rodert explained that, as a tier one supplier in the automotive industry, recall Insurance is “by far” the group’s most challenging line of insurance.

“In order to get markets to participate in our current insurance programme, we have been forced to take quite a bit of self-retention and that is placed within the captive. And this past year we changed the whole set-up of a combined GL/PL and recall insurance programme, where we use the captive even more and as a vehicle to be able to approach reinsurers as well as direct insurers,” he said.

Rodert said that he is now looking at more lines of insurance to place retention levels in the captive. This would help diversify the portfolio and potentially diversify the type of reinsurance covering the captive. Currently no cyber cover is placed within the captive.

The Swerma president said that the main benefit of using a captive is the ability to show that he and his team believe in its risk management work.

“Taking higher self-retention is a good way of giving some comfort to (re)insurers. A captive is also a good way of driving and financing some of the risk management work. And, in the end, I think using a captive is a very good way of reducing the total cost of risk for the group,” added Rodert.

He said it is difficult to say whether the current high level of interest shown in captives will continue if and when the market turns. But he did say that a significant factor will be the way regulations evolve. “Changing regulations in different captive domiciles can play an important role,” he said.

The success of Amrae in persuading the French Treasury to change the rules to make it more attractive for French companies to run domestic captives has drawn much interest across fellow Ferma member associations, at a time when it is clear that European firms need to raise their resilience in an era of polycrisis.

Rodert pointed out that his captive is based in the US and so not really close to developments in European currently. But he has worked with EU-based captives before and at Ferma.

“The recent years of increased regulations, reporting demands and administrative burden for captives in the EU have definitely increased the threshold for when a captive is a good choice. My experience is that right now a captive in the US is much easier to operate and a more useful tool for a company. I think we have seen some positive changes in the EU – in France, for example – and I hope that continues,” he said.