GEORGE TOWN, GRAND CAYMAN — A Cayman contingent of reinsurers and industry experts will be attending the Monte Carlo ‘Rendez-Vous’ 8 – 11 September, an annual networking event that attracts thousands of reinsurance industry participants from around the world. The Cayman delegation includes representatives from Greenlight Re and Southport Re, who will be on hand to discuss the Cayman story with reinsurance industry leaders.

Cayman’s success in the reinsurance/insurance industry reaches back decades, and it continues to thrive as a result of consistent innovation.

Cayman’s new Insurance Law, which was developed in response to market demands, provides a legal and regulatory framework that is bespoke to reinsurers and issuers of insurance linked securities (ILS). The existence of a flexible but tailored prudential regime for open market reinsurers has proven an immediate success with reinsurers, such as Southport Re, recently establishing in the Cayman Islands, and with a number of additional reinsurers in the pipeline.

Given the importance of the financial services industry, including its robust banking, structured finance, investment funds, and insurance/reinsurance businesses to the economy, the Cayman Islands Government has dedicated a new Ministry of Financial Services to serve it. Industry veterans helm the Ministry: the Honourable Wayne Panton, former chairman and partner at Walkers Global, is Minister, and Mr Roy McTaggart, former Managing Partner of KPMG Cayman, is Councillor.

Minister Panton encouraged the delegation in their endeavour: “The Cayman Islands Government is fully supportive of this initiative. We recognise that reinsurance is an area that Cayman is uniquely and well-positioned to serve, in light of our long history in the securitisation, insurance and investment funds space. We will continue to work with industry to provide the support for healthy and continued innovation going forward.”

The Cayman Islands Government has proactively engaged in all international regulatory initiatives addressing transparency and all-crimes anti-money laundering for decades, including those from the OECD (where it received top marks from the Global Peer Review in April 2013), the FATF and the IMF. Most recently, it was one of the first offshore jurisdictions to commit to sign a Model 1 Intergovernmental Agreement with the United States on FATCA, where all Cayman financial institutions will report to the Cayman Tax Information Authority all information relating to US Persons’ accounts.

The Cayman Islands has ratified 31 Tax Information Exchange Agreements with other nations, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, the UK and the US.with more underway.

With Cayman’s dominant role in risk securitisation, the jurisdiction is uniquely placed to continue to lead financial risk innovation through cross-sector convergence and product development.