Bermuda’s captive market thrives on concentrated expertise and strategic evolution

In the second of two pieces based on a Captive Review online panel, executives from Aon and Marsh discuss how Bermuda’s dense concentration of talent and increasingly sophisticated captive structures are shaping the future of strategic risk financing.

As the global captive insurance market continues to evolve, Bermuda remains one of the industry’s most influential and sophisticated domiciles. During a recent online panel hosted by Captive Review for its Bermuda Focus edition, leading industry executives discussed not only the island’s remarkable concentration of talent, but also the growing sophistication of the captive market itself.

The discussion, moderated by Marc Jones, Editor, Europe and the rest of the world, Captive Review, featured Seadna Kirwan, managing director at Aon, and Tanja Korff, managing director and Bermuda client services leader at Marsh. Together, they provided insight into why Bermuda continues to play such a central role in global captive insurance despite increasing competition from other domiciles.

A small island with extraordinary depth

One of the panel’s strongest themes was the sheer concentration of insurance expertise located within Bermuda’s relatively tiny geographic footprint.

Korff described the island’s professional community as uniquely dense and highly specialised. Bermuda has a population of roughly 60,000 people, yet an unusually high proportion of those residents are experienced professionals working across insurance, reinsurance, law, accounting, actuarial science and risk management.

According to Korff, the level of talent concentrated on the island is unlike anything she has experienced elsewhere. Since returning to Bermuda three years ago, she has been particularly struck by the number of highly skilled actuaries and insurance professionals operating within such a compact environment.

Importantly, she argued that Bermuda’s professionals are not only highly capable but also deeply invested in the long-term success of the jurisdiction itself. While Bermuda hosts multiple classes of insurance business beyond captives, the various sectors work together within a closely connected ecosystem that strengthens the market as a whole.

Kirwan expanded on that idea by illustrating just how physically concentrated the market really is. Bermuda itself measures only 22 square miles, but the island’s insurance and business community is clustered into an even smaller area.

Within what she estimated may be less than a single square mile, insurers, reinsurers, insurance-linked securities specialists, captive managers, lawyers, accountants, regulators and government representatives operate side by side. This proximity creates an environment where collaboration occurs naturally and constantly.

For captive owners, that concentration delivers tangible advantages. Kirwan explained that discussions about complex risk challenges can quickly involve multiple perspectives from across the broader insurance ecosystem. A captive manager might consult reinsurance brokers, underwriters or insurance-linked securities specialists within minutes, generating innovative solutions that may not emerge in more fragmented markets.

Watch the full panle discussion below.

This collaborative dynamic, she argued, is one of Bermuda’s defining strengths. The close proximity of different parts of the risk capital chain encourages innovation because professionals with different specialisms regularly exchange ideas and challenge conventional thinking.

The result is an ecosystem capable of delivering sophisticated and highly customised risk financing solutions for multinational organisations.

“The close proximity of different parts of the risk capital chain encourages innovation.”

Collaboration fuels innovation

The panel repeatedly returned to the idea that Bermuda’s size, rather than limiting the market, actually enhances its effectiveness.

Kirwan noted that the ability to engage quickly with different sectors of the insurance industry creates a culture of practical problem-solving. Captive owners increasingly face complex and interconnected risks, ranging from cyber threats and employee benefits to pension liabilities and climate-related exposures. Bermuda’s integrated environment allows specialists from different disciplines to work together efficiently when designing solutions.

This level of interaction is especially important as captive insurance becomes more strategic. Traditional captive models often focused on funding deductibles or insuring specific risks. Today, however, many organisations are using captives as broader enterprise risk financing platforms.

Bermuda’s collaborative infrastructure supports this evolution by providing direct access to expertise across insurance, reinsurance and capital markets.

Korff suggested that this concentration of talent also contributes to the island’s reputation for innovation. While many jurisdictions discuss emerging concepts such as parametric insurance and advanced risk financing structures, Bermuda is often implementing these solutions in practice.

That practical experience reinforces the island’s credibility and helps maintain its position at the forefront of captive development.

A mature but expanding market

The discussion also examined the current state of the captive market ahead of the Bermuda Captive Conference 2026, one of the industry’s most important annual gatherings.

Kirwan characterised the Bermuda market as both robust and resilient. While the pace of new captive formations might not match the rapid expansion seen during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, she stressed that raw formation numbers do not tell the full story.

Bermuda still hosts more than 600 limited-purpose insurers writing tens of billions of dollars in premium. More importantly, many of those captives are increasingly large and sophisticated operations managing diverse lines of business.

From Aon’s perspective, Kirwan explained, Bermuda continues to attract larger captive structures capable of supporting complex strategic initiatives. In recent years, the market has seen significant growth in the use of captives for employee benefits programmes, allowing companies to combine property and casualty risks with employee benefit risks within a single structure.

There has also been growing interest in incorporating pension-related risks into captives, further expanding the strategic role these entities can play within corporate risk management.

Kirwan argued that these developments demonstrate Bermuda’s flexibility and ability to respond to evolving client demands. Rather than focusing solely on formation statistics, she suggested that the true measure of Bermuda’s health lies in the increasing sophistication and strategic importance of the captives already operating there.

Captives become strategic platforms

Korff agreed with this assessment and highlighted another significant trend: the growing maturity of Bermuda’s captive population.

According to Korff, many Bermuda captives are now well established, with long operating histories that reflect their stability and strategic value. Within Marsh’s portfolio, captives actively writing business often have average tenures of more than 25 years, with approximately 70% operating for more than two decades.

This maturity is important because it reflects how captives evolve over time. Organisations frequently begin with relatively straightforward captive arrangements designed to address a particular issue or retain certain risks. However, as those captives mature, companies increasingly use them as sophisticated strategic platforms integrated into broader risk financing strategies.

Korff explained that many captive owners now engage directly with insurance and reinsurance markets through their captives, using them not merely as funding vehicles but as active participants in enterprise-wide risk management.

This shift is driving more advanced discussions across the Bermuda market. Topics such as employee benefits integration, pension risk financing and parametric insurance solutions are becoming increasingly prominent.

Parametric insurance, in particular, reflects the innovative direction of the market. Unlike traditional indemnity insurance, parametric structures trigger payments based on predefined events or measurable parameters, such as weather conditions or natural catastrophe data. Bermuda’s market participants are not only discussing these structures theoretically but actively implementing them for clients.

As a result, Korff believes the conversations taking place at industry gatherings such as the Bermuda Captive Conference are becoming significantly more strategic and sophisticated.

Looking beyond formation numbers

A key takeaway from the panel was that Bermuda’s success can no longer be measured simply by counting new captive formations.

While other domiciles might report higher volumes of newly established captives, Bermuda’s market appears increasingly defined by depth rather than breadth. The island’s captives are becoming older, larger and more strategically integrated into their parent organisations.

This maturity brings a different type of value to the domicile. Long-standing captives with substantial premium volumes and sophisticated risk programmes contribute to Bermuda’s reputation as a centre for advanced risk financing expertise.

Combined with the island’s dense concentration of specialised talent and highly collaborative ecosystem, this evolution positions it as a market focused less on quantity and more on complexity, innovation and long-term strategic value.

For both Kirwan and Korff, the future of Bermuda’s captive sector appears closely tied to that continued evolution. As corporate risks become more interconnected and organisations seek increasingly flexible financing solutions, Bermuda’s integrated insurance ecosystem may prove more relevant than ever.

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