IMAC wooing Canadian captives
(CNS Business): The Insurance Managers Association of Cayman is actively seeking Canadian business, reporting that business owners and executives from that country are looking more carefully at captive insurance structures, particularly in the oil and gas, shipping or other heavy industrial companies and 2013 saw healthy mid-market growth in captives.
Captives are useful structures for diversifying a company’s business operation and income stream and keeping those revenues in house rather than paying them out to the commercial underwriter. IMAC says that the traditional use for US captives may not be as appealing to their North American counterparts as the Canadian business environment is less litigious and there are already universal healthcare and worker’s compensation programmes. However, Canadian companies are using captive insurance for more innovative purposes such as terrorism threats, environmental pollution, warranty risk and premium or secondary healthcare coverage.
IMAC representatives Bill Messer, MD of Five Continents, and Maggie Papadopoulos, Senior Account Manager at Aon Risk Solutions, have been making regular trips to Canada to discuss the advantages of captive structures in general and the benefits of Cayman as a domicile with business owners and executives there. They are on the road again next month, IMAC says, attending RIMS Canada in Winnipeg, 14 to 17 September. A larger group was also present at the annual Canadian Captive Conference, held in Calgary last May.
IMAC Chairperson Rob Leadbetter explained why Canada and Cayman were made for each other when it comes to captive insurance: “In addition to the tax information exchange agreement that Cayman has with Canada, which helps Canadian companies take advantage of the same cost effective tax strategies as would be applicable for companies domiciled in Barbados under that double tax treaty, Cayman also offers the effective use of segregated portfolio companies and the newly launched portfolio insurance companies.
“We are excited to be working with Canadian captives as they tend to really think outside of the box when considering business to put in the captive and it is this kind of innovation that we, as a domicile, thrive on.â€
Cayman is home to 764 captives, making it the second-largest domicile. This strength comes from a 40 year history of development of the captive insurance industry and of providing quality infrastructure and service to captive owners.
Category: Finance, Financial Services
