MIKHAIL RAYBSHTEYN

Mikhail Raybshteyn started his career in 2003 with the corporate tax department of AIG doing a variety of tax work which gave him a good baseline understanding of federal and state tax. His switch to EY in 2005 was unexpected as the recruiting call came out of the blue. However, as he put it, it is true that sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, and that was mostly luck.

He joined in 2005 within EY’s Financial Services Organisation–Tax group and his sector assignment was insurance, something he attributes to having come from AIG. In the span of his career with EY he did a number of “very exciting and different things” that all contributed to his education, tax skills and overall professional growth.

Over the past nearly 18 years, Raybshteyn has spent time in the domestic insurance tax practice, transaction tax, international tax and finally around 2011 he started diving deeper into captive insurance. This encompassed a lot of things that he had been doing prior to 2011: domestic tax, international tax, structuring, etc. It was also a huge bonus to work with EY’s corporate risk management, insurance consulting and actuarial professionals who have taught him a lot.

As a first year senior manager, after his promotion in 2012, he started looking for opportunities to further expand the amount of work EY did in the captive insurance space and together with some of the senior leaders and his senior manager peers they have invested their time and effort into expanding the practice. As part of his promotion to partner in 2019, he was slated to continue growing and expanding the captive insurance services, especially in the Americas region (working alongside other partners and managing directors in this space).

Today, he co-leads EY’s Americas captive insurance services practice and works with global captive network leadership on EY’s global reach and suite of services.

Raybshteyn was described as the essence of the best and brightest young talent for captive insurance services. He is said to be a strategic thinker who is consistently thinking of new ways to serve clients within the captives space. He is well known in the community and a go-to within his company as a technical resource. He is very driven and will do what it takes to provide the best service and advice.

Here he states why captive insurance is so exciting, why people should think carefully before committing to working in captives and why it is that captives have emerged from the shadows of the wider insurance market.

Do you feel that the captive insurance industry is a rewarding sector to work in?

Yes, this is a very exciting space to be. In my role I get to work on a variety of clients in the traditional insurance space, insurance brokerage and at the opposite end of the spectrum, companies that have nothing to do with insurance or financial services and whose sole connection to this world is their captive.

For me, it is that intersection of the economy where all (or at least majority) of the pieces fall together.

Would you recommend the captive insurance industry to young people as a future career path?

Overall, a resounding yes, but with a caveat. It depends on what side of the captive insurance industry they are planning to serve. In some areas, one can make an entire career. In others, this can be a great part of the person’s overall responsibility and career path. Said another way, the captive insurance industry has something for everyone so it’s definitely a very interesting and vibrant industry to be fully or partially involved with.

How do you feel that the captive insurance industry will evolve?

The captive insurance industry no longer lives in the shadows of the overall insurance industry, it is its rightful part. It is also the industry that allows more flexibility for innovation so companies can truly benefit from looking into the future, working across all corporate functions, and design the environment that works for each individual structure, whether it’s corporate, private, family office, partnership, etc.

Do you think that your long-term future remains in the captive insurance industry?

The nature of my work and what I do takes me across a broad cross-section of very interesting insurance and insurance-related businesses, but I am planning, at least for now, to continue focusing a large part of my activities in the alternative risk transfer space and its innovation.