Captive insurance is an alternative to self-insurance in which a parent group or groups create a licensed insurance company to provide coverage for itself. The main purpose of doing so is to avoid using traditional commercial insurance companies, which have volatile pricing, and may not meet the specific needs of the company. By creating their own insurance company, the parent company can reduce their costs, insure difficult risks, have direct access to reinsurance markets, and increase cash flow. When a company creates a captive they are indirectly able to evaluate the risks of subsidiaries, write policies, set premiums and ultimately either return unused funds in the form of profits, or invest them for future claim payouts. Captive insurance companies sometimes insure the risks of the group's customers. This is an alternative form of risk management that is becoming a more practical and popular means through which companies can protect themselves financially while having more control over how they are insured.There are many variations of how captives can be set up, which can be broken into two categories. The first category is known as non-sponsored in which the company is the creator and beneficiary. Within that category the most common are single-parent or “pure”, group and association. The second category is sponsored in which the captive is owned and controlled by another company that allows other companies to “rent” insurance. This category includes Protected Cell Captive Insurers and Rental Captives.