Multiple captives are a trend that is going to grow - according to a leading executive in the field.

Tom Kendall, senior vice president of Marsh, told delegates at ICAP that companies were more and more setting up more than one captive to meet their insurance needs.

"Multiple captives is a trend that is going to grow," he said as he moderated yesterday's first panel discussion at the conference. " With people setting up captives to suit their needs."

Mr. Kendall, who has more than 20 years of captive insurance company experience in the design and implementation of single parent, rent-a-captive and group and association captives, pointed to companies represented by panellists.

He said that Delta and Archer Daniels Midland Company had both set up two captives to meet their insurance needs. Delta had one in Bermuda and one in Vermont, while Archer formed its first captive in 1975 in Cayman, and has another in Vermont.

Mike Lusk, corporate vice president, Insurance & Risk Management at Archer said: "We have written in captive since 1975. The reason for having a captive is we are in the grain business and insurance was hard to come by and there was a hard market. We originally went with Hopewell and took small retentions of less than $500,000. This has evolved over the years.

"We currently have $50,000,000 of retention and we utilise 100 percent for miscellaneous covers such as livestock, gin stock floaters and railcars."

Rick Price, risk manager at Delta Airlines, also spoke to the delegates about the captives his company had and insurance in general. "Before September 11 we had two companies do our property insurance, now we have 23 companies. Things have got a lot more complicated," he said, adding that the cost of insurance had doubled for the company.

He said Delta's captives, one in Vermont and another in Bermuda, were set up to meet a need for their company. They spread the risk - and as a positive bonus made some money for Delta on the side.

Mr. Price also added that with the number of multiple insurers, a captive was a good way to hide the cost of certain insurance cover from other insurers - thus making it easier to do deals.

"It is an example of how you can use a captive as a shield from pricing," added Mr. Price.

The Delta Bermuda captive deals with personal lines insurance (auto, home etc.) for employees in conjunction with Travelers Insurance Company as a fronting partner.

The Vermont captive is used as a fronting insurer for reinsurers providing capacity on existing programmes.

"One of the benefits of captives is the ability of it to front for us," he added. ICAP continues until Wednesday.