Bermuda’s next chapter: signals from the 2026 Risk Summit

The Bermuda Business Development Agency’s Risk Summit 2026, held 9-11 March in Bermuda, took place at a time of unexpected volatility, inadvertently highlighting how deliberately Bermuda is positioning itself to convert volatility into structural advantages for its economy and companies.

David Parker, head of business development at the BDA, acknowledged this: “We’re meeting at a time of great global volatility, and that is directly affecting this industry,” he told Bermuda:Re+ILS during the conference. That context shaped both the tone and the content of the week. The programme moved deliberately between macro disruption, “wildfires, geopolitics,” and “more granular sessions around specific changes within the industry,” a balance that Parker dubbed as “fantastic.”

That balance was no coincidence. Parker explained that the event is not designed as a pure thought-leadership forum, but as a mechanism to connect global narrative with on-island opportunity. Bringing that audience to Bermuda and exposing them to the market in context is a strategic objective in itself.

Equally, the structure of the week reflected a clear priority on interaction, with Parker citing economic impact as a big-picture driver. The emphasis on networking was intentional, an element that Parker believes “real value is created.”

What stood out this year was how that engagement is evolving. Alongside established re/insurance players, there was a growing focus on new areas of relevance. “To hear so much focus on the importance of embracing AI is refreshing and reassuring.” More broadly, “there’s a real convergence happening between insurance, digital assets, and innovation,” Parker noted, pointing to where future growth may come from.

That feeds directly into the BDA’s next phase. While risk and insurance are very well established, Parker was quick to voice that “any jurisdiction overly reliant on one industry is vulnerable.” The response is twofold: economic diversification into areas such as digital assets, infrastructure, and the “blue economy,” alongside “attracting new business entities on the back of our strength as the world’s risk capital.”

Underpinning both is coordination, and what Parker described as “the ‘Bermuda Triangle’: government, regulator, and private sector all working together,” which remains central to how Bermuda executes business.

The direction of travel for the BDA is about extending Bermuda’s role. As framed during the week: “How do we take Bermuda to the next step in terms of the contribution that it’s making to the global economy?” That question, rather than any single panel discussion, is what the summit ultimately set out to answer.

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