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Developing Your Captive Director Personal Judgment Skills --

A Book Review of "Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors" by Julie Garland McLellan

How can you help members of a captive board of directors develop their personal judgment skills? Case studies are one means. Here is a book review of Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors by Julie Garland McLellan, written by John Salisbury, Captive.com, llc partner. John hopes the book review will generate interest on the part of others to contribute one or more case studies for possible publication and/or a training program for captive directors. E-mail John with your interest in this area, or to submit your own case study.

What are some of the issues you might face as a director of a captive insurance company? You'll find some thought-provoking answers in a great read: Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors!! This recent book written by Julie Garland McLellan presents a number of practical cases studies that will surely help directors practice and develop valuable personal judgments in dealing with a variety of situations that are likely to manifest themselves in the process of governance.

The author is a leading governance and boardroom expert from Australia.

The book contains twenty-two short case studies. Each case study is presented in a format that lays out the views of various experts, together with McLellan’s comments on each of the case studies. At the end of each case study the reader finds invaluable questions to help in developing his or her own response to the dilemma(s) presented.

None of the case studies presented in this book are taken from a captive insurance company. However, the issues described in the book are more than theoretical. A number can, and undoubtedly have, occurred in some captive insurers’ boardroom environments. Among the issues addressed in the case studies are:

• conflicts of interest
• conducting business outside of meetings
• confidentiality
• relationships between board and executives
• director tenure
• director duties
• and more!

Being an effective captive Board member requires that a director not only have or develop broad knowledge about captive insurance company finance and operations, but also the talent to make personal judgments on issues where there is not one single “right” answer.

The only criticism the reviewer has of the book is that the experts do not suggest to the reader that prior adoption of Board policy could have prevented or provided a prescribed resolution to some of the dilemmas.

If you currently serve on a Board, or ever plan to do so, this fine book will help develop your personal judgment before you need to use it. Enjoy!

Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors can be purchased from Amazon.com for $27.26. You can support captive.com by using either of the the Amazon.com links supplied on this page. Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors (Volume 1)