PwC forecasts growth for Bermuda captives

PwC Bermuda says that it sees considerable new growth opportunities for Bermuda’s captive insurance industry.

PwC Bermuda, which has a dedicated captive group, and is a sponsor of this week’s 2014 Bermuda Captive Conference, highlights North American connections at the 2014 BCC when talking about these new opportunities for growth.

PwC Bermuda captive insurance and tax team specialists Richard Irvine, Scott Slater and Sean Kelly are among the panellists.

“There are significant opportunities for growth in North American markets as companies increase their risk sophistication.” says David Gibbons, director of the captive insurance group at PwC Bermuda.

He continues, “One major trend is the increasing use of captives by large multinationals to fund employee benefit programmes. Many captives are over time moving these programmes into their captives in order to centralise the process for managing those risks.”

“Middle market clients in the US are also now catching on to the use of captives for a variety of risk management planning reasons.”

“There’s a growing use of captives in the US middle market, among companies who may not have considered or understood the benefits of captives before.” says Gibbons.

Gibbons also notes that there has been an increase in captives from Latin America as Bermuda pursues tax information exchange agreements with partner countries.

“Latin America is growing,” Gibbons says. “There has been significant captive growth coming from Colombia and Mexico specifically, and heightened interest from Peru and Chile.”

Moreover, with the Canada-Bermuda Tax Information Exchange Agreement [TIEA] in effect since 2011, it is hoped more Canadian corporations will incorporate captive insurance companies in Bermuda.