Insurance Watch: The Bermuda Market
About Jennifer Haworth
Jennifer Haworth is a Director in the firm’s Litigation & Dispute Resolution team. Jennifer has a wide practice in all aspects of civil and commercial litigation both in Bermuda’s courts as well as in mediation and arbitration.
Jennifer Haworth’s full profile on mjm.bm.
Two recent announcements demonstrate that Bermuda has an important role to play in the global insurance market and is seeing growth in 2013.
The Bermuda Monetary Authority (“BMA”) presented figures for the period ending July 2013 in which 47 new insurers were registered. This represents an 81% increase on last year which saw 26 new insurers registered. Interestingly, 13 of those new registrations came in the month of July alone. The BMA has indicated that the new registrations were predominantly special purpose insurers (“SPIs”). For 7 of the registered SPIs, their total projected premiums in their first year of business are expected to be over $151 million. The new registrations will cover a broad range of business areas including property catastrophe reinsurance, catastrophe bonds and life and annuity. It was also noted that the number of captives in Bermuda remains steady and has done so for the last three years. Contrary to the suggestions that captives are re-domiciling onshore, this has not been the case in Bermuda.
In addition to the BMA’s announced figures, AM Best also released its latest list of the Top 50 Reinsurers for 2012. More than a third of the list are registered in Bermuda. The list illustrates Bermuda’s strength with 14% of the market share of global reinsurers of non-life (property and casualty) gross premiums written globally, edging out London (13%). The Bermuda registered insurers who made the list are: PartnerRe (10), Everest Re (11), Catlin (23); Axis Capital (24); RenaissanceRe (28), Arch Capital (30), Aspen (32), White Mountains (33), Validus (34), Endurance (35), Alterra (38), Maiden (40), Allied World (42), Montpelier Re (43), Platinum Underwriters (47), Wilton Re (48).