It is a seed, not a cost.
Each year, your church sends hundreds of thousands of dollars in premiums to commercial carriers. That money never returns. Holland House believes your premium is not a cost. It is a seed.
Imagine a church that spends $2 million a year on insurance: health benefits, workers compensation, property, liability, cyber, and sexual misconduct coverage. That number feels manageable. The broker renews the plans each year, premiums go out the door. Just a cost of doing business.
Healthcare costs trend upward at roughly 9 percent per year. The Rule of 72 tells us that at 9 percent, costs double every eight years. That $2 million becomes $4.3 million per year by year ten. Add up every premium dollar over that decade and you arrive at roughly $30 million in cumulative spend. Over thirty years, the number reaches $273 million.
Cumulative Insurance Spend Over 30 Years
Based on a church starting at $2M/year with a 9% annual trend.
When a church writes a premium check to a commercial carrier, three things happen. The carrier holds the premium dollars for months before paying claims, investing them for their own profit. This is called float retention, and the investment income belongs entirely to the carrier. When claims come in lower than expected, the carrier keeps the difference. This is called underwriting profit, and that surplus never returns to the church. Finally, administrative fees, broker commissions, and overhead consume 15 to 25 percent of every premium dollar before a single claim is paid.
The result is a one-way pipeline: money flows from the church to the carrier, and none of it comes back.
"They call it a premium. We call it a seed."
7.5%
Average first-year savings vs. commercial carriers
16.5%
Savings by year three (compounding)
14–17%
CAGR on retained captive capital
$0
Capital returned to churches under the fully insured model
95%
of churches have never been introduced to self-funding.
This is not an accident. Among large employers with 200 or more employees, 80 percent are self-funded. Among churches, that number is approximately 5 percent. The gap is not a matter of eligibility. Churches qualify for self-funded structures. The gap is a matter of awareness, and the awareness gap exists because the people who profit from ignorance have no incentive to close it.
Brokers earn commissions on premiums placed with commercial carriers. Self-funding reduces those premiums, which reduces those commissions. The structural misalignment of incentives means that churches have been systematically excluded from the most significant cost-saving mechanism available to any employer.
Self-Funded vs. Fully Insured by Employer Type
When premiums leave your church, they build someone else's balance sheet. Holland House builds yours.
Holland House provides the legal and financial architecture for independent non-denominational churches to pool their purchasing power and control their insurance infrastructure. This is the same structure that Fortune 500 companies, hospital systems, and large school districts have used for decades. It is called a co-opetition model: churches cooperate on infrastructure while remaining fully independent in mission and governance.
The model operates through two core mechanisms.
Mechanism 1
For benefits, payroll, and workers compensation, Holland House serves as the employer of record for all participating church employees. All employees are pooled under one entity, achieving enterprise-scale rates and professional administration. The church retains full operational control of its staff. Holland House handles the administrative and insurance infrastructure.
Mechanism 2
For commercial insurance lines including property, general liability, cyber, sexual misconduct, and directors and officers coverage, participating churches agree to pool together as one buyer. This achieves enterprise-scale pricing without requiring an employer of record relationship. Where it makes economic sense on a line-by-line basis, a captive insurance company is formed and owned by the participating churches.
A common question from church administrators is whether participation in a captive insurance structure creates unrelated business income tax (UBIT) exposure. It does not. The IRS has long recognized that insurance activity undertaken to manage an organization's own operational risk is not unrelated business activity. Captive insurance structures are used by hospitals, universities, and large nonprofits across the country, all of which maintain their 501(c)(3) status without issue. The Holland House captive insures the participating churches' own risk: their own employees, their own facilities, their own operations. No commercial insurance is being sold to outside parties. The structure is fully compliant with existing IRS guidance and has decades of legal precedent behind it.
Churches possess three characteristics that make them uniquely suited to a co-opetition structure. First, they share a common mission: unlike competing businesses, churches in the same city are not fighting for market share. Second, they operate within high-trust networks: pastors talk to pastors, and a recommendation from a trusted peer carries more weight than any marketing campaign. Third, they have homogeneous risk profiles: churches share similar employee demographics, facility types, and operational patterns, which makes them ideal candidates for pooled insurance structures.
Revenue Streams
Per-employee-per-month administrative fees for EOR services
Commission on placed commercial insurance lines
Investment income and underwriting profit from the captive
Whether you have 50 members or 5,000, Holland House gives every participating church access to the same enterprise-scale pricing, professional administration, and coverage quality. The coalition does not distinguish between large and small. Through the pool, a startup church accesses the same leverage as a Fortune 500 company.
A network of churches creates immediate density, which strengthens the economics for every participant. Denominations, associations, and regional networks are the ideal unit of participation, because they already share governance, trust, and operational standards. The larger the coalition, the stronger the leverage.
You manage the budget. You see the renewal increases every year. You know the money does not come back. Holland House gives you the actuarial analysis and structural alternative you have been looking for. This is the conversation your broker will never start.
The surplus and investment income generated within the Holland House captive structure does not belong to a commercial carrier. It belongs to the participating churches. This capital forms the Church Planting Fund: a permanent economic engine dedicated to funding new congregations across America.
Every church that joins Holland House is not just saving money. It is becoming a stakeholder in the future of the American church. Your premium is no longer a cost of doing business. It is capital with a purpose.
Our goal is specific and measurable: 5,000 new churches planted in 10 years, funded entirely by the capital that participating churches reclaim from commercial carriers. Not through donations. Not through fundraising campaigns. Through the structural economics of a system that was designed to keep that money in the first place.
Consider the math: $1 million per year, compounding at 9 percent annually over thirty years, equals $136 million in premiums sent to a commercial carrier. What if even a fraction of that stayed within the church ecosystem, earning returns, funding operations, planting churches?
“When premiums leave your church, they build someone else’s balance sheet. Holland House builds yours.”
The traditional insurance model was not designed to serve the church. It was designed to generate returns for shareholders. Holland House inverts that structure, placing the church at the center of every financial decision.
Holland House is built on the same structural model that Fortune 500 companies, hospital systems, and large school districts have used for decades.
Enter your church's total annual insurance premium below. See the 30-year impact and what the Holland House model could mean for your ministry.
Every commercial carrier underwrites your church using detailed actuarial models. They know your claims history, your risk profile, and your projected costs for the next decade. They use that data to price your premium at a level that guarantees their profit. You have never seen that analysis. We will show it to you. Fill out the form below and we will send you a documents request.