The long game: how Bermuda became the world’s life reinsurance capital

As of year-end 2024, Bermuda-based reinsurers held more than US$900 billion in US life and annuity liabilities alone and the island now accounts for roughly 84% of all US life and annuity reserves ceded offshore. Reserves ceded from US life insurers to Bermuda have climbed to around 38% of the US$2.4 trillion total ceded by the US life industry, up from just 26% in 2020.¹ For a jurisdiction once synonymous with hurricane and catastrophe covers, it is a striking second act and, in the view of practitioners on the ground, one that is still gathering pace.

From catastrophe to longevity

Bermuda’s reinsurance story arose out of disaster. After Hurricane Andrew and the 9/11 attacks, the Island became the default venue for new property-catastrophe capacity. That pedigree built a sophisticated regulator, deep bench strengths in actuarial, audit, legal and asset-management and an institutional memory of how to underwrite tail risk, each of which are not easy to replicate.

What is less widely appreciated is that, over the last 10 years, the real innovation on the Island has shifted from catastrophe to life. The reasons for this include US life insurers facing sustained pressure to optimise statutory reserves and free up capital, the acceleration of UK pension risk transfer, the re-rating of savings portfolios in Asia under new economic-value solvency regimes and the arrival of private capital backed reinsurers hungry for long-dated liabilities.

As a result, Bermuda has become the preferred offshore platform for life reinsurance. The Island is now home to numerous commercial life and annuity reinsurers, with the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) having registered 13 new commercial long-term entities in 2024 and a further 10 in 2025², maintaining a long-run average of around 10 formations per year³. Demand increasingly extends beyond the US, with Japanese savings business and UK pension risk transfer mandates joining the pipeline.

Why Bermuda?

The reasons are partly regulatory and partly commercial. On the regulatory side, the BMA has built a purpose-fit long-term insurer regime, with licences calibrated to the size and complexity of the business written. That regime sits on top of the Economic Balance Sheet framework and the Bermuda Solvency Capital Requirement, a risk-based capital model consistent with Solvency II principles but tailored to the realities of a reinsurance hub. The numbers show it is well capitalised: asset-intensive reinsurers on the Island reported a median solvency ratio of 259% at year-end 2023, well above the 100% or the 200% that most insurers target.⁴

The jurisdiction has a ‘passport’ that few competing jurisdictions can claim. Bermuda enjoys full Solvency II equivalence in the European Union and is a Qualified and Reciprocal Jurisdiction under the NAIC framework in the US. In practical terms, a US or European cedent can place business with a Bermuda reinsurer without the collateral and capital penalties that would otherwise apply.

Layered on top of the regulatory framework is an ecosystem. A new life reinsurer arriving on the Island can, within weeks, assemble the actuaries, auditors, investment managers, custodians, independent directors and counsel it needs to operate credibly. The head office requirement, which requires that the insurer is directed and managed in Bermuda is meaningful and there is sufficient expertise on Island to satisfy it.

The BMA itself is commercially minded and accessible in a way that regulators in much larger jurisdictions are not, a difference that, in our experience advising the bulk of new market entrants, is consistently the single most cited reason for choosing Bermuda.

The 2023–2026 inflection

The last three years have been a defining period. Since January 2023, every block transaction, flow or in-force, entered by a Bermuda commercial long-term insurer requires prior BMA approval.⁵ This requirement enhances the engagement between the BMA and cedent regulators and has the result of pre-emptive regulatory engagement on transaction details. A clear example of the BMA’s prudent and attentive approach to regulation.

In March 2024, amendments to the prudential rules took effect, memorialising a substantial enhancement of the long-term regime, with tighter requirements on governance, affiliated-investment transparency, collateral arrangements and scenario-based reserving.⁶

Since January 2026, the BMA’s enhanced public disclosure regime for long-term insurers is live, requiring detailed asset and liability disclosures that were previously held only on a supervisory basis.⁷

Writing life reinsurance in Bermuda is now implicitly more rigorous than it was even three years ago yet, despite initial concerns, that is precisely what the market demanded. The tightening results in a better regulated and more resilient market, the byproduct is credibility and stability and the result is policyholder protection, all orchestrated by the BMA.

The outlook

From our vantage point, the direction of travel is clear. The combination of a purpose-built regulatory regime, genuine international recognition, unmatched intellectual capital and a regulator willing to engage commercially has given Bermuda a structural lead in life reinsurance that will be very hard to dislodge. The next phase of the story will be defined less by growth for its own sake and more by how transparently and durably the market manages the liabilities it has already taken on. That is the long game, with a harder, slower kind of success but also the kind that tends to last.

Footnotes:

¹ ALIRT Research, reported in American Academy of Actuaries, ‘Asset-Intensive Reinsurance Ceded Offshore’ (2024). Figures reflect year-end 2024 US statutory data; year-end 2025 filings were not yet publicly compiled at the time of writing.

² Bermuda Monetary Authority, Insurance Registration Statistics (December 2024 and December 2025).

³ Approximate average new long-term reinsurer formations per annum over 2017–2025, drawn from BMA annual registration statistics.

⁴ Bermuda Monetary Authority ‘Insights and Reflections on Asset Intensive Reinsurance in Bermuda’ (21 March 2025).

⁵ Bermuda Monetary Authority, supervisory guidance on block reinsurance transactions in force from January 2023.

⁶ Amendments to the Insurance (Prudential Standards) (Class C, Class D and Class E Solvency Requirement) Rules took effect in March 2024;

⁷ The BMA’s enhanced public disclosure regime for long-term insurers, following its December 2024 consultation, took effect in January 2026.

First Published In the Bermuda Business Review 2026-2027 – June 2026