The Barbados International Business Association (BIBA) will host Barbados Risk and Insurance Management (BRIM), its first virtual conference, which is set to be held on 24 to 25 March. Derrick Cummins, BIBA president and CEO of Amicorp Bank & Trust notes that, as Barbados is one of the top domiciles for captive insurers in the world, such a conference was long overdue. According to Cummins, reports showed that as businesses and individuals grapple with the fallout from the COVID-19 global pandemic, the insurance industry worldwide is experiencing a high demand for coverage. However, on the flip side, he said, insurers were facing high capital adequacy requirements, creating the type of hard market that leaves clients little room for negotiating on premiums, and insurers little appetite for writing new policies. The Barbados Financial Services Commission (FSC) released 2020 statistics showing that Barbados had 279 captives, the bulk of which are Canadian and American entities. The FSC highlighted that Barbados licensed 16 new captives in 2020, however, in the same year, 13 captives were closed. Ricardo Knight, BIBA’s marketing and communications committee chair and senior vice president of Marsh Captive Solutions, highlights that captive registrations into Barbados continued to increase despite one of the harshest pandemics that the world has ever seen. Some of the topics for discussion at BRIM 2021 include risk management post pandemic, emerging markets, investment opportunities, new initiatives, disaster risk financing and sustainable development. To register for the BRIM conference visit here.
