Hamden received a $94,573 equity distribution from its insurance provider, the Connecticut Interlocal Risk Management Agency (CIRMA), Mayor Curt Balzano Leng announced in a press release on Monday.
“This is an example of meaningful partnerships resulting in meaningful savings in local government,” Leng said, “Services offered by CIRMA ultimately provide a great financial benefit for the Town, and we’re proud to continue this partnership.”
CIRMA is a liability, property and auto insurance provider, and it has returned $37 million to its members in the last 11 years. It has 362 members across the state, according to beaconfalls-ct.org. The press release also included that CIRMA distributed $35,124 to Hamden last year.
According to the CCM website, one of the organization’s objectives is to “pool [its] buying money to negotiate more cost-effective services for our communities.”
Leng said that being a CIRMA member has helped the town in a number of ways that another insurance company would not.
“Being part of a municipal insurance cooperative for our liability, auto and property insurance has been very beneficial to the town and saved us a lot of money,” Leng said. “Certainly unlikely to occur with a private insurance company.”
Since private insurance companies are profit-based, they usually don’t distribute a surplus back to its paying members. But since CIRMA is a collaborative of municipality leaders, they return unexpected revenue and leftover insurance costs to the members, according to Leng.
Members receive more money as a part of these equity distributions as CIRMA is more successful. Every year, the CIRMA board votes on how much is distributed back to its members. The amount of money given out in the distribution program is described as “a percentage of CIRMA Member’s Equity” on the CIRMA website.
Leng, who is a board member of both the CCM and CIRMA, said that the money is distributed to each municipality based on population.
The most recent census figures report that Hamden had a population of 60,566 people in Jan. 2019. It isn’t likely that Hamden’s population has changed drastically enough to warrant an increase from a $35,124 distribution in 2020 to a distribution of almost six figures in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic likely affected the funding and availability of equity in the 2020 policy year.
In recent years, Hamden received an equity distribution of $92,419 in 2019, $86,426 in 2018, $93,532 in 2017 and $60,330. This year’s sum of $94,573 is a return to expectancy after last year’s financial struggles.