Twenty-five years ago, Braden and Kristi Black set out to build one of the most trusted skilled trades staffing companies in the country. What they didn’t plan for was a carrier going bankrupt — and taking their security deposit with it.
KT Black started the way most family businesses do — with a clear vision, long hours, and a bet on people. Braden and Kristi built their staffing company one tradesperson at a time, growing a workforce of electricians, pipefitters, and skilled craft workers across multiple states from the very beginning. What started as a multi-state operation grew into a company deploying hundreds of workers across commercial construction, industrial, and data center projects nationwide.
With growth came risk. A staffing business in the skilled trades carries a different insurance profile than most — physical work, job-site exposure, and significant workers’ compensation liability spread across multiple state jurisdictions. For years, the traditional insurance market was the only option. So that’s where we played.
Our high-deductible carrier went bankrupt. Not only did we lose coverage — they took our security deposit with them. We were left exposed, with a growing multi-state workforce and no path forward in the standard market.
Most people don’t answer cold calls. Braden did. A broker reached out asking a simple question: was he open to learning about a new approach to insurance? At the time, exposed after a carrier bankruptcy and frustrated with every option the standard market offered, the answer was yes.
That conversation introduced the concept of group captive insurance — a structure where business owners pool together, control their own risk, and share in the underwriting profit when claims are managed well. It sounded almost too good. Then we started doing the math, and more importantly, we started asking the questions only a business owner would think to ask.
— Braden Black, Co-Founder, KT Black & KT Captive Advisors
We joined our first group captive over a decade ago — not as advisors, not as brokers observing from the outside, but as member-owners. We sat in the same meetings as other members. We watched our premiums, our claims, and our capital work in real time. We understood what it felt like when the captive performed well, and what it required when it didn’t.
That experience is something no amount of broker training can replicate. Most advisors in this space learned about captives from a product manual. We learned them from the inside — as a business just like yours, with real money on the line.
No other broker knows group captives the way we do.
We are uniquely qualified to guide you — because we learned group captives from the inside out. We don’t just advise on captives. We live in one.
We Advise What We Live
KT Captive Advisors exists because we kept meeting business owners facing the same wall we hit — rising premiums, shrinking options, carriers who disappeared when it mattered most. And no one was talking to them like owners. We’re not selling insurance. We’re sharing a structure that saved our business, and helping you determine — honestly, with real numbers — whether it can do the same for yours.
Braden & Kristi Black
Co-founders, KT Black family of companies. Still independently owned. No private equity. Twenty-five years in the skilled trades across multiple states — and still active members of the captive we joined over a decade ago.
We’ll review your exposure, premiums, and claims history — and give you a straight answer on whether the math works. No pressure, no jargon. Just an honest conversation from someone who’s been exactly where you are.
