Captive insurance organizations include insurance companies that are owned and controlled by their insureds. A captive insurance company is described as single parent captive if it is owned and controlled by one company and insures that company and/or its subsidiaries.

A group captive is an insurance company owned and controlled by two or more non-affiliated organizations the captive insures.

A group captive can be either homogeneous and insure similar types of businesses risks or non-homogeneous and insure risks of several types of organizations. In the U.S., group captives are licensed by a domiciliary state and use a fronting carrier, or they operate under the Federal Risk Retention Act. The companies may be either stock, reciprocal or mutual in organizational form.