Employers are increasingly turning to captive insurance as more than just a means to cut their bills for employee benefits.

That’s according to a study from Willis Towers Watson, which found that while the primary driver for nearly half (44 percent) of companies with employee benefits in their captive is to control and improve their claim data to help with ongoing cost management — up from a quarter (24 percent) in last year’s study — the percentage of companies that cited cost savings as the main driver actually fell, from two thirds (67 percent) in 2015 to 44 percent in 2016. (Typically a captive is a licensed insurance carrier created from a parent company, which insures to reduce the risk exposure of vendors or others that have a busines relationship with the parent company.)

As captive insurance moves away from a single money-saving purpose, more companies are using it as a strategic tool to manage risk and benefit costs proactively and to analyze claim data to identify and address key cost drivers.