Why Base a Life and Annuity Reinsurer in Bermuda?

Athene Holding Ltd. recently completed making a $500 million equity investment in Jackson National Life Insurance Company.

In an effort to explain the deal to investors, Athene also posted a discussion of its corporate structure.

For people with a deep interest in insurer capitalization and reinsurance arrangements, Athene provided a look at its capitalization and reinsurance arrangements.

The Pembroke, Bermuda-based reinsurer also addressed a simpler question, that may have occurred to many ordinary life and annuity agents: Why are so many insurers putting their head official headquarters in the Caribbean, rather than traditional U.S. insurance industry centers, such as New York City and Hartford, Connecticut?

Resources

• A link to Athene’s discussion of its corporate structure is available here.
• An article about the Jackson deal is available here.

Here’s how Athene answered the question in connection with its own headquarters location thinking.

Athene says in the corporate structure guide that it wants to sell reinsurance to insurance companies based in Europe as well as to insurance companies based in the United States?

Bermuda is a great place to locate a company that works with both U.S. and European insurers, Athene says.

For the United States, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has designated Bermuda as a “qualified jurisdiction,” and as a “reciprocal jurisdiction” for reinsurance purposes, meaning that U.S. insurance regulators can look at reinsurance from a Bermuda-based company about the same way they might look at reinsurance from a Hartford-based company.