"The broker sells the policy. The risk architect owns the program."
One reference for one seat in two settings — the Family-Office Risk Architect and the Corporate CFO. At a Fortune-100 the risk-transfer program is spread across a treasury risk team, a benefits group, a captive manager, and three competing brokers. At a $200M operating company or a $50M–$500M family office, the whole program sits on one desk. This guide is the manual for that desk: 39 chapters, every exposure mapped, every contract interrogated, every structure governed as one balance sheet of risk, with two parallel running cases — the Stillwater Family Office and Patterson Industries — so you see your own seat on every chapter that transfers.
The Risk Architect seat governs the program. Whether the balance sheet runs through a family office or an operating company, the discipline is the same: name every exposure, decide whether to retain, transfer, or finance it, underwrite the underwriter before the contract, place each program area through one accountable broker, and govern the whole as one balance sheet of risk.
You sit as the CIO / Treasurer / risk-architect chair at a $50M–$500M+ family office. The program runs across multiple brokers — life, P&C, captive, PPLI, excess, specialty — and no one is accountable for the whole.
The chapters that travel with you appear flagged with the Stillwater Family Office running case — a fictitious composite UHNW family carrying the decisions a real one faces.
You sit as CFO of a $50M–$500M revenue operating business — family-owned, founder-led, or PE-backed. The board's audit committee owns risk oversight. You inherited a program placed through whoever the founder knew, and the last claim was bigger than anyone expected.
The chapters that travel with you appear flagged with the Patterson Industries running case — a fictitious composite $200M-revenue, four-plant industrial-components manufacturer with a hired-in CFO, an audit-committee mandate, and a five-year ESOP-versus-PE-sale decision on the horizon.
Where a chapter is genuinely family-office specific (PPLI, ILIT funding mechanics, dynasty structures), the Patterson callout is replaced by a brief margin note that says the chapter may be skimmed and where the corporate thread picks back up. This is honest: the guide refuses to force a corporate hook where one does not naturally exist.
Written for the seat that owns the risk-transfer program — the family-office risk architect, the corporate CFO, and the advisors who serve both. The persona-routing table tells you where to start.
| You are… | Start with these chapters |
|---|---|
| Family-office CIO / COO / risk lead | The whole arc. Parts I, IV, and VII are the program; Part III is the advanced chassis you'll be asked to approve. Follow the Stillwater Family Office running case. |
| Corporate CFO ($50M–$500M revenue) | Parts I, IV, V, VII, and IX — the corporate-CFO spine. Ch 17–20 (captive), Ch 22 (excess tower), Ch 25 (D&O/EPLI/fiduciary), Ch 26 (cyber), Ch 29 (RPS), Ch 33 (transaction risk), Ch 39 (claim strategy). Follow the Patterson Industries running case. |
| Audit committee / independent director | Ch 1, 4, 25, 29, 30, 33, and 39 — the corporate-governance arc: the mandate, the carrier-strength floor, management liability, the written risk policy, the review cadence, transaction readiness, and the claim teaching case. |
| RIA / wealth advisor | Parts II, III, and V — the contracts you'll be handed and asked to bless. Ch 8 and Ch 12 are the ones clients most need you to read for them. |
| CPA / tax advisor | Ch 9, 11–13, 15, and 18 — the tax-driven structures, where a wrong assumption is a current-tax event. |
| Estate-planning attorney | Ch 14, 15, and 25, plus Part VII — the trust-owned policy, split-dollar, and fiduciary liability. |
| Trustee (ILIT / corporate) | Ch 8, 14, 16, and 29 — administering and monitoring a policy you did not select but now answer for. |
| Insurance broker upgrading the practice | The whole arc, but especially Ch 4 (carrier selection), Ch 29 (the RPS), and Ch 30 (the annual review). What your most disciplined client expects from you. |
39 chapters across 11 parts plus 9 appendices. The Stillwater Family Office case (gold callout) and the Patterson Industries case (navy callout) run in parallel. ~24 chapters carry both; ~5 carry a Patterson bridge note; ~10 are family-office specific with a corporate-skim margin note.
"both" = chapter carries the Stillwater Family Office and Patterson Industries running cases. "FO" = family-office specific, with a corporate-skim margin note.
39 chapters across 11 parts plus 9 appendices. Searchable, hyperlinked TOC and exhibits list. Two parallel running cases (the Stillwater Family Office and Patterson Industries) on every chapter that transfers across both seats. AI prompts inline at section boundaries on the chapters where AI changes the practitioner's workflow. Single-user license for one practitioner.
The actual templates a sitting risk architect uses — the Risk-Exposure Map, the Retain-vs-Transfer Simulator, the Carrier Strength Tracker, the Illustration Stress-Tester, the §831(b) Feasibility Model, the PPLI-vs-Taxable Crossover, the Excess-Tower Sizer, the Premium-Finance Spread Calculator, the ILIT Funding & Crummey Tracker, the Property & Cat-Gap Worksheet, the LTC Self-Insure Model, the Transaction-Risk Screen, the Executive-Benefit Designer, the Cross-Border Exposure Map, and the Program Review Dashboard. Branded, formatted, and tied directly to the chapter that drives each tab.
A growing library of free interactive tools at the Institute's website runs the math from the guide on your scenario. The umbrella-liability sizer, the captive feasibility screener, the carrier-strength brief generator, the program-audit worksheet, the RPS template generator. No purchase required to use the tools; the guide is the reference that explains when each tool is the right one to reach for.
This guide is the dedicated companion to The CFO & Controller's Reference Guide for the corporate finance seat, and to The Family Office Reference Guide for the principal's office. The CFO Guide's Chapter 31 (Insurance, Risk & Captive Programs) and the FO Guide's Chapter 13 (Insurance & Risk Management) are the desk-level overviews; this volume is the depth reference both route to whenever an insurance or risk decision exceeds what a generalist CFO or family-office seat carries in working memory.
Buy the CFO Guide + the IRA Guide for the corporate CFO who has just been handed the audit-committee mandate to evaluate the risk-transfer program (Patterson Industries territory). Buy the FO Guide + the IRA Guide for the family-office CIO or COO who has just been handed the risk-architect seat (Stillwater territory). Buy all three to speak fluently to both the corporate audit committee and the family principal on the same conversation.
Two-year-old single-family office, founder-principal in his mid-sixties, recapitalization on the calendar. The first program review surfaces ~$40M of in-force life insurance across three brokers (none ledgered since issue), an under-priced Florida coastal-home wind exposure, and three life contracts held personally that should have been in the dynasty ILIT. The family-office CIO sits the architect chair. Across 39 chapters she builds the exposure map, sets the carrier-strength floor, rebuilds the excess tower to $50M, closes the cat gaps, runs the PPLI sleeve, places the ILIT funding, prices the cross-border exposure on the foreign daughter-in-law, and produces the written risk policy statement the principal signs at the next family meeting.
Third-generation $200M-revenue family-owned industrial-components manufacturer, four plants (Cleveland HQ, Akron, Greenville SC, Reynosa Mexico), ~600 employees, ~$28M EBITDA. Six months ago a $4M product-liability suit settled at the policy limit. The audit committee told the new CFO (Dan Reyes, hired-in CPA/MBA) to commission a full program review, evaluate a captive, and report back. The family is exploring an ESOP transition or PE sale within five years. Across 39 chapters Dan replaces the inherited nephew-broker arrangement, rebuilds workers' comp as a large-deductible structure, stands up a Vermont-domiciled §831(b) captive against the product-liability and supply-chain tail, rebuilds the $25M umbrella as a $75M layered tower across three carriers, runs a cyber pen-test that triggers a full coverage rebuild, places executive-benefit COLI on Sarah and Dan, closes the Reynosa hurricane gap with parametric coverage, and produces the written risk policy statement the audit committee adopts.