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Newsletter | Articles Captive Insurance Opts to Stay Close to Home Recent reports have told us that the Isle of Man and Guernsey together account for over 70 per cent of the UK’s captive insurance business. Bermuda accounts for 15 per cent and Ireland 8 per cent. With the overall market having consistently grown, this represents a significant increase for the Crown dependencies over the last decade, while Bermuda and Cayman, for example, have managed to hold on to their pre-existing clients without developing significant new business from the UK. In the period from 1997, Guernsey and the Isle of Man have grown in terms of captive expertise and have strengthened their regulatory framework: they also share the same time zone and offer direct and relatively cheap connections with the UK. There’s another wake-up call, too, for the Caribbean jurisdictions: the rise of the Vermont captive industry. Landlocked and definitely chilly for most of the year Vermont looked for another industry to boost its economy. Although captive legislation has been on the books since the eighties, Vermont neglected to promote itself until the late nineties, setting the benchmark of overtaking Bermuda within a few years. With well-known brands Wal-Mart, McGraw-Hill, Starbucks, and most recently, Wells Fargo as well as many others on board, Vermont could soon surpass its benchmark. The USA is following the UK’s trend in placing new captive insurance where the expertise lies, in broadly the same time zone, in an untarnished jurisdiction. Whilst many of us tend to align our business to the ‘world village’ concept, it’s worth remembering that in the case of captive insurance, it looks like the world is shrinking. |