Glossary

A domestic insurer is an insurer that is both domiciled and licensed in the state in which insurance is written.

A domestic surplus lines insurer is a surplus lines insurer that is domiciled and licensed in the same state. A surplus lines insurer may be barred from selling surplus lines coverage in its state of domicile.

Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use of force by a group/individual operating within the United States without foreign direction committed against persons/property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

An insurer's domicile is the jurisdiction, typically a state or country, where it is formed or incorporated. The domicile determines the regulatory authority that is principally responsible for overseeing the insurer. For a captive insurer, the domicile is the location in which it is licensed to conduct insurance business. Several factors that must be considered when selecting the most appropriate and best domicile for a given captive insurer include capitalization and surplus requirements, investment restrictions, income and local tax obligations, formation and ongoing operating costs, acceptance by fronting insurers and reinsurers, availability of banking and other services, and geographic proximity.

The domicile manager In a captive insurance company is the person whose role it is to keep the books, pay bills, record and maintain excess and reinsurance contracts, and interface with regulators. The exigency of today's financial and regulatory worlds compels the manager to perform more services, at a higher level of professionalism, than was expected in the past. In most domiciles, the regulators require, or at least strongly encourage if the legislation does not mandate, that captive owners retain a professional management firm to keep the records and actually manage the captive.

The domino theory is a theory of accident causation and control, that was developed by H.W. Henirch. It purports that all accidents, whether in a residence or a workplace environment, are the result of a chain of events. The chain of events consists of the following sequential factors: ancestry and social environment, an individual's mistake, an unsafe action and/or physical hazard, the actual accident, and an injury as the result of the preceding factors. These factors are described as dominoes, and the removal of any one of these five factors can prevent the accident.

Dose-response assessment is estimating the potency of a chemical.

Dose-response relationship is the quantitative relationship between the amount of exposure to a substance and the extent of toxic injury or disease produced.

Dose response is the degree to which a biological organism's response to a toxic substance quantitatively shifts as its overall exposure to the substance changes. For example, a small dose of carbon monoxide may cause drowsiness; a large dose can be fatal.

Double excess coverage is a provision within directors and officers (D&O) liability policies covering an insured director's or officer's work in conjunction with an outside firm, usually a nonprofit organization. When "outside directorship liability" coverage is written on a double excess basis, the policy will be required to pay claims only after: (1) the outside organization's D&O insurer pays the claim and (2) the outside firm is financially unable to reimburse the director or officer for the claim.