As an international financial centre, the Cayman Islands is constantly seeking to maintain its competitive edge with innovative transformations and additions that keep the financial services industry fresh and progressive.

The most recent addition, and a strategic area of growth to Cayman's financial services industry, is reinsurance. Cayman Finance officially launched reinsurance as one of its main recognised sectors of the financial services industry, now featured alongside banking, investment funds, trusts, insurance and capital markets, at its annual New York Breakfast Briefing in January 2017.

While still in its growth period in the Cayman Islands, the reinsurance entities established to date have already become a significant portion of all insurance related assets under management in the jurisdiction. The previous administration of government voted in favour of a private members' motion focused on giving incentives to reinsurance businesses and to ensure there was sufficient investment in the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) that would allow for a reduction of obstacles to doing business.

This reduction would in turn attract more reinsurance business to Cayman, which the government, CIMA and Cayman Finance all recognised as a necessity. The growth at which new reinsurance firms have opened on the island confirm the thoughts of Cayman Finance, the government and CIMA that it is an industry that is here to stay. The increase of regulatory expertise in the area, with the recruitment of reinsurance specialists Cayman has seen firms such as Greenlight Re, Knighthead, OxbridgeRe, Aureum Re and more either open on island or expand and grow their businesses in recent years. When looking at the benefits of conducting and nurturing reinsurance business in Cayman, there are of course the obvious benefits: reinsurance businesses bring physical presence, typically employing at least 10-15 people and they provide a new field for Caymanians to pursue careers in, with many roles to fill including brokers, actuaries and other ancillary services, and finally add to the revenue contributed by financial services to government every year, which most recently has been over 50% of the total revenue.

In order to ensure that this growth continues and is well sustained into the future, the Cayman Finance reinsurance sector sub-committee is working closely with the Cayman Islands Government and CIMA to make Cayman as attractive as possible to potential reinsurance businesses.

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