Bermuda’s staying power: why the island remains the captive market’s first choice / Why Bermuda still leads the captive market as competition intensifies

Tanja Korff, from Marsh, explains why Bermuda and its regulatory pragmatism and depth of capital keep the most sophisticated captives in the world on the island.

In a global market with nearly 90 competing domiciles, captive owners have never had more choice. Yet even as emerging onshore and offshore domiciles compete on price, Bermuda’s retention remains stable. Much of that new competition is onshore, as more US states build captive statutes of their own. A domicile ultimately proves its value by keeping the business it already has, and on that measure Bermuda remains resilient.

Because industry-wide figures for corporate migrations are rarely consolidated in public registries, Tanja Korff, managing director and Bermuda client services leader at Marsh, uses the portfolio under her management as a practical proxy for the wider market.

“If I bring it home and look at our own book of business here in Bermuda, we have had net-zero re-domestications in 2025,” she says. “That means the re-domestications from Bermuda have been directly offset by re-domestications to Bermuda.”

For every company that moved a programme off the island, another moved one on. And judging by the growth of 2026, what that stability protects is Bermuda’s hold on its core business: the large, multi-line, cross-border programmes at the centre of corporate risk management. That, Korff says, is where the island’s strength lies, and where a change in how companies use captives is working in its favour.

The shift is intentional. Where companies once used captives tactically to weather short-term pricing spikes, they now treat them as permanent assets. “Organisations are looking beyond the short-term market cycles to strengthen their long-term financial resilience of their organisations,” Korff says. The trend has built through years of rising commercial rates and tighter terms, which have left companies retaining more of their own risk; once a captive carries that much exposure, its owner wants it in a jurisdiction built to hold it for the long run.

Building a captive for the long term changes how a company views its domicile;: structural flexibility, regulatory stability and deep pools of capital come to matter more than the lowest set-up cost.

The maturing model shows in the licensing pipeline. The Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) licensed 10 new captives in 2025 and a further four in the first five months of 2026, and the island remains home to more than 600. Those formations span most lines of business, a breadth Korff views as a sign of strategic intent. And judging by the early pace of 2026, appetite for new formations shows little sign of slowing. She also notes continued “strong use of segregated account company structures”, valuing their speed to market, efficient capital use and ring-fencing.

“It’s a very robust regulatory environment in terms of the rules, the requirements, the reporting, but it’s the way in which it’s done, which is very Bermuda.”

Where the demand stems from

Companies turn to captives when commercial cover becomes harder to secure or more expensive to price. “We tend to see those that are facing volatility, emerging risk, and limited or expensive capacity,” Korff says of the sectors driving new formations: healthcare and life sciences, technology and cyber-driven businesses, chemical, energy and production, and, more recently, education. In each, the commercial market tends to ration capacity or price it steeply. 

The dynamic is clearest in healthcare, where rising liability costs have pushed hospitals to retain more risk, and in cyber, where fast-changing exposures make standard commercial cover a poor fit. As those programmes grow, owners also lean more on the reinsurance and capital available on the island.

Regulation as a commercial tool

For many owners, the regulator is the deciding factor. A regulator that responds quickly and scales its demands to the risk saves a captive both time and money, and. Tthat, Korff argues, is where Bermuda stands out. The BMA applies risk-based supervision, scaling its requirements to the nature, scale and complexity of each captive. For a mid-sized captive holding predictable risk, that can mean a fraction of the actuarial and reporting work a full commercial licence would demand.

Standards are high. The regulator’s expectations are set out in the BMA Insurance Code of Conduct, which covers board oversight, risk management, internal control and fitness and propriety, while recognising proportionality. That framework is built on international credentials: Bermuda’s broader commercial insurance regime holds Solvency II equivalence with the European Union and is recognised by US regulators as a National Association of Insurance Commissioners-qualified and reciprocal jurisdiction. For captive owners, that credibility carries practical value, smoothing relationships with global partners including auditors, banks, reinsurers and fronting carriers.

The relationship is vital on the ground. When clients visit the island for their annual meetings, Korff typically arranges direct updates with the BMA, a dialogue she says the regulators genuinely welcome. That upfront contact pays off when a company needs change. “When something happens in an organisation and they need to adjust their risk management strategy, the regulator already knows them,” Korff says. It means the relationship is already there; it’s a strategy.

“Competition is good. And if there’s one thing that Bermuda has, it’s a sharp pencil already.”

The BMA keeps up communications well beyond the point of licensing, which lets it respond quickly when an owner needs to change course. The approach is pragmatic, but rigorous: it raises issues early, expects its managers to do the same, and prefers to resolve matters in conversation before turning to enforcement.

“It’s a very robust regulatory environment in terms of the rules, the requirements, the reporting,” she says, “but it’s the way in which it’s done, which is very Bermuda.” After two decades at Marsh, in the US and Bermuda, Korff says the way in which they conduct business is very different from other places she has experienced.

Everything, in one place

Another advantage is the market itself. “Bermuda remains the go-to when a client needs scale, sophistication, and access, especially for complex programmes,” she says, so as captives move beyond single-line retentions into multi-line platforms, reinsurance and structured solutions, the island stands out. In a world where captives are increasingly used as a long-term strategic vehicle, not just for those market fixes, Bermuda is well positioned for that next stage.

Its key differentiators, she says, are the depth of its ecosystem and specialist expertise, with direct access to global reinsurers, insurance and alternative capital. A credible regulator with commercial pragmatism offers flexibility of structures, so a wide range of options isare available to organisations as they want to scale their captives and their risk management structures.

Bermuda’s appeal extends beyond captives. The same market runs a large commercial insurance and reinsurance sector and an active insurance-linked securities and special purpose vehicle business, giving multinationals more than one way to finance and transfer risk. “There’s exciting stuff happening here, both within the captive space as well as the commercial, and then the insurance-linked securities and special purpose structures, that helps organisations, especially those multinationals, manage their risk,” Korff says. “So, they should continue to keep their eye on Bermuda.”

Staying attractive, she adds, means continuing to evolve, by investing in regulatory capability, engaging with market innovation and maintaining global credibility, while preserving what multinationals value most: certainty, expertise, speed to execute and access to risk capital.

The next five years

Korff expects the next phase of growth in the more challenging parts of the market: cyber, climate resilience, employee benefits and emerging technologies. Each shares a volatile or fast-changing loss experience, tightening or uneven commercial capacity and a need for tailored wording and multi-year planning. 

This is where captives tend to perform well, she says, but especially captives domiciled in Bermuda, because Bermuda combines a deep concentration of reinsurance expertise, direct access to global reinsurance and alternative capital, and a sophisticated, proportionate regulator that is used to complex risk structures and innovation. 

She expects those captives to keep maturing into multi-year risk-financing platforms, drawing on more sophisticated retentions, analytics and capital solutions to carry a wider mix of traditional and emerging risk.

Competition is healthy in the market, and much of it revolves around price. 

The largest and most complex programmes tend to stay where the depth of expertise and capital sits, which continues to play to Bermuda’s strengths. Korff, for one, welcomes the growing field. 

“Competition is good,” she says. “The fact that there are more domiciles popping up all over the world is a great opportunity for domiciles to sharpen their pencils. And if there’s one thing that Bermuda has, it’s a sharp pencil already.”

Tanja Korff is the managing director and Bermuda client services leader at Marsh. She can be reached at tanja.korff@marsh.com

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