Latin America is a growing captive region due to the growing economies in the multi-Latina countries and the need for insurance products and services, a panel has suggested at the World Captive Forum in Miami.
The panel included Adriana Scherzinger, international programmes at Zurich; Delfin Viloria, risk and analytics leader at Willis Towers Watson; Felipe Chacon, Americas regional distribution manager at Zurich Insurance Company; and Paul Bailie, managing director at Willis Towers Watson.
On the key trends on the Latin America captives market over the past three-to-four years, Scherzinger suggested that Latin America is a “top emerging market for captive business”. She explained that they “have seen sustainable growth in the number of captives from the region”.
Scherzinger outlines that education on captives is getting better in Latin America and that service providers are doing training sessions throughout the region, which she noted that is mutually beneficial for everyone in the market.
Looking at the next five years of Latin America, the panel also highlights the benefits that the hardening market will bring such as new formations and expansion of captives that already exist within the region.
“We’ll see more formation of captives for Latin American companies and also expand of coverage will be seen in those captives,” Scherzinger said.
Zurich’s Chacon also highlighted during the panel that employee benefits will be the future for captive within the region. He foresees a big trend in taking over risk engineer approach towards employee benefits.
“They really want to understand what it is they can do in order to lessen the claims,” he explains.
Elsewhere, WTW’s Bailie described the shift he has seen over the years in Latin America on captives that the discussion has changed. He said that 15 years ago it “would have been much focussed on tax issues” and “prospects would have been private companies”.
But recently, Bailie has seen “more involvement by professional risk managers, a more corporatised approach” in the region. He suggested that this is the development that they are seeing as with a more of a corporate approach that the portfolio management becomes bigger and “a captive vehicle is the way to do that”.
