AN IDEAL GLOBAL CHAMPION

Bermuda’s world-leading reinsurance market continues to demonstrate strong resilience and relevance despite the challenges presented as we continue to navigate this pandemic.

Bermuda’s re/insurance market has global significance, with more than 1,200 re/insurers holding total assets in excess of $800 billion and writing gross premium of approximately $150 billion (as of December 31, 2019).

Given this stature, and in light of the absence of industry conferences, we felt it was important to provide insight into how the market has handled recent changes—and how Bermuda continues to offer certainty and to innovate.

With rates increasingly hardening, the commercial property and catastrophe market has been performing strongly once again. There has also been impressive, tangible growth in other areas such as life and annuities, insurance-linked securities (ILS), and captives.

Charting a history of growth

The ILS market continues to grow globally both in terms of coverage and risk types, and Bermuda remains the most significant jurisdiction in this space. Greg Wojciechowski, CEO of the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), highlighted in a June webinar that total market issuance stood at $41 billion, of which $38 billion was listed on the BSX with 469 listed securities.

Significantly, at a time when sustainability is very much front of mind for investors, ILS has also been deemed ESG-compliant, which highlights the potential for further growth.

When it comes to the captive insurance industry, having first introduced the notion of captive insurance back in the 1960s, Bermuda is proud to hold its position as the world’s leading domicile. Today, we are home to a broad, and growing, range of industries using captives for their risk management needs, with a total of 715 captives writing gross premiums of approximately $40 billion (as of December 2019).

Furthermore, there continue to be important new and innovative entrants across the sector.

The specialist emerging business insurer Relm was granted its Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) licence in late March, while Nakamoto, the world’s first captive insurer to provide custody insurance to digital assets, was established in January this year.

Last year Bermuda witnessed the arrival of Convex, the largest class 4 re/insurer to enter the market for many years, and by far the largest startup in the market’s history.

In fact, if you look at the latest BMA statistics for the first eight months of this year, a total of 35 new insurers have been registered.

We applaud our world-class regulator for remaining fully operational and highly engaged throughout these challenging times. The BMA has continued to issue new licences and provide the practical guidance and oversight needed for continued compliance with international standards, something that consistently sets Bermuda apart.