According to a survey in Reinsurance Magazine, the growth in captives is continuing unabated, although it is innovative new uses for them rather than traditional in-house insurance management that is driving the growth.
There are about 4,000 captives world-wide, and net annual growth continues at about 200 new captives each year. The major offshore domiciles continue to be Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Barbados, the Isle of Man and Dublin. Bermuda alone hosts nearly 1,500 captives. Many of the most popular domiciles have been busy during 1999 re-vamping their regulatory regimes in order to avoid being on the OECD's black list when it is published in June 2000.
Rent-a-captives and protected cell companies (PCCs) continue to be the most popular formats for new formations. Guernsey, Bermuda and Cayman already have PCC legislation in place. Innovative uses for captives include employee benefits' captives, and alternative risk financing.
Onshore captives have been seeing considerable interest due to the creation of 'offshore onshore' regimes in some countries, notably Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. Sometimes these onshore captives can be used in conjunction with offshore locations to obtain a particular desired result.
Insurance industry commentators often like to pretend that the distinction between offshore and onshore has become blurred, while the jurisdictions like to claim that tax-saving is no longer the primary consideration alongside regulatory effectiveness and financial sophistication; but the figures show that these attitudes are mostly politically-correct camouflage - it is tax that drives captives, and it continues to drive them offshore as it always has done.
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