Control the program. The savings follow.
Drover Risk Advisors brings every seat at the table to your side of it: program strategy, underwriting, distribution, and alternative-risk design — for the operators and groups that carry real risk, and for the captives, RRGs, MGAs, and agencies that serve them.
Two kinds of clients. One vantage.
Operators & groups
Companies and associations that carry real risk — auditing what they own, restructuring it, or forming a program of their own.
Insurance organizations
Captives, RRGs, MGAs, programs, and agencies that need underwriting discipline, modern technology, or distribution that actually grows.
Every seat at the table.
Insurance advice usually comes from someone who has only ever sold it. This practice is built on having run the other side.
Brokerage
Senior roles inside the largest brokerages in the world, Lockton and Gallagher among them. How programs are marketed, how carriers are negotiated with, and where leverage actually sits.
Carrier
Founding executive and COO of a Vermont-domiciled specialty insurance carrier licensed across 40+ states — a decade of underwriting, operations, distribution built from scratch, and regulatory work, from the chair where risk is actually priced.
Alternative risk
The full regulatory life of member-owned and alternative structures: risk retention groups, captives, cells, large-deductible programs. Currently Treasurer of the National Risk Retention Association.
Most advisors have seen one side of the table. Your program deserves someone who has run all of them.
Own the program you pay for.
Four ways to engage — every one fixed-fee and scope-defined. The findings are yours: implement them with this practice, with your current broker, or with anyone else.
Program & placement audit
A carrier-grade review of what you actually own: structure and retentions, market strategy, contract insurance requirements, loss data, and the service you are getting versus the service you are paying for.
You receive: written findings, priced priorities, and the questions to put to your incumbents.
Alternative-risk feasibility
Captive, risk retention group, cell, or large-deductible with deductible reimbursement — modeled honestly against your losses, cash flow, and appetite for retention. Feasibility that tells you no when the answer is no.
You receive: a structure recommendation with the numbers behind it, or a documented reason to stay put.
Structure build & manager selection
Design first, then a genuine selection: this practice is manager-agnostic by design, working across independent captive managers and domiciles so the structure drives the vendor choice — never the reverse.
You receive: a formed, governed structure and a management team chosen on the merits.
Standing advisory
The owner's-side risk advisor across renewals, capacity relationships, and governance — board and committee participation, a quarterly cadence, and a desk that reads the market from the carrier's side of the glass.
You receive: year-three service that looks like year one.
The rules of the practice: fixed fees and defined scope. No commissions and no contingent compensation on advisory work. Any conflict is disclosed in writing before it exists. And the advice stands alone — nothing here obligates you to buy anything, from anyone.
Build, scale, improve.
For captives, RRGs, MGAs, programs, and agencies — advisory on the three problems that decide whether a structure thrives.
Distribution strategy & build
The hardest problem in this business. Selective agency and producer networks designed the way durable ones are actually built — panel architecture and appointment standards, channel and association strategy, and the courting discipline that grows a book without giving away the pen or the margin.
You receive: a distribution architecture and the playbook to execute it — from someone who has built one from scratch.
Underwriting & program advisory
Appetite design, guidelines, authority and referral frameworks, program re-underwriting, and selection discipline — carrier-grade judgment from a decade in the chair where risk is actually priced.
You receive: an underwriting instrument your capacity partners can believe in.
Technology & automation
Modern submission flow, data capture, and automation designed around one rule: technology augments underwriting judgment — it never replaces it. Build-versus-buy decisions, workflow design, and practical AI deployment with an operator's skepticism.
You receive: a roadmap you can actually execute, from an advisor who has built this — not just bought it.
Same rules of the practice: fixed fees, defined scope, no contingent compensation, and conflicts disclosed in writing before they exist.
Ask your current program one thing:
“Describe year three.”
Most insurance relationships are courted in year one and serviced by reflex in year three. Six questions tell you which kind you have.
- Who re-marketed the program last year — and what did they show you to prove it?
- What has changed in your structure since the day you first signed?
- When did someone last read a contract's insurance requirements before you signed it?
- What does your loss data actually say — and who told you, in writing?
- What would a meaningful retention change do to your total cost of risk? Has anyone run it?
- If you asked for your complete underwriting file today, how long would it take to arrive?
If the answers are thin, the market is pricing your program accordingly. That is the conversation worth having.
Have it with usAlex Petrovich
- Treasurer · NRRA
- Licensed P&C · 40+ states
- MBA · Creighton University
- Omaha, Nebraska
Twenty-plus years on every side of the commercial insurance table.
The largest brokerages — Lockton and Gallagher. Carrier operations at Mutual of Omaha and Berkshire Hathaway. And then the chair where it all came together: founding executive and COO of Circle Star Insurance Company, a Vermont-domiciled specialty carrier licensed across 40+ states. Over a decade, we built something I'm proud of — a national operation, distribution built from scratch, disciplined underwriting, and the alternative-risk architecture underneath it all.
What I believe about this business is simple: speed, service, and real industry expertise win — modern technology combined with old-school underwriting. Operators deserve an advisor who has actually sat in the underwriter's chair, built the carrier, and managed the full regulatory life of alternative risk structures.
Drover is that chair, working for you.
Start the conversation.
A first call is thirty minutes, costs nothing, and ends with a straight answer about whether there's a fit.
Based in Omaha. Working nationally. Replies within one business day.