Captives: The origin story that thrived
Bermuda’s captive insurance market remains a global leader with strong scale, diverse structures and sustained underwriting performance.
Captive insurers are insurance companies established by organisations to insure their own risks, rather than purchasing all their cover from the commercial market. They are used by businesses across a wide range of industries to manage risk, access reinsurance markets and tailor insurance programmes to their specific needs.
Bermuda has long been recognised as one of the world’s leading captive domiciles. In fact, it established the world’s first modern captive insurance company in 1962, pioneered by insurance entrepreneur Fred Reiss, who coined the term “captive”. This landmark creation launched a multi-billion dollar legacy for Bermuda.
The data displayed highlights the size, structure and underwriting performance of the island’s captive market, as well as the breadth of risks it supports.
Recent figures suggest Bermuda’s captive market has entered a period of contraction. After reaching 653 licensed captives at year-end 2023, the total declined to 608 by year-end 2025. New captive formations have also moderated, falling from 17 in 2024 to nine in 2025, with only two new formations recorded during the first half of 2026. While Bermuda continues to attract new captive formations, the data indicates that growth in the number of licensed captives has slowed in recent years.
That said, Bermuda’s captive insurance market continues to demonstrate both scale and diversity, supporting organisations across a wide range of industries and risk types. At the end of 2024, the 632 captive insurers registered in Bermuda had total assets greater than $156 bn and capital and surplus exceeding $88 bn.
Captives writing connected or related business accounted for the largest number of licensed entities, while captives writing third-party business generated the highest gross and net premiums.
The market continues to be dominated by pure captives, which represented 67% of company structures in 2023. Other reinsurers, rent-a-captives and group captives accounted for much smaller shares, reflecting the continued popularity of the traditional captive model while demonstrating the availability of alternative ownership structures for organisations with different risk financing needs.
Although Bermuda’s captive sector serves organisations globally, the businesses using Bermuda remain heavily concentrated in North America and Bermuda, which accounted for more than 70% of risk assumption and premium in 2023. Europe represented the second-largest regional market, while business originating from Asia, Japan, Latin America and Australasia made up smaller proportions of the overall portfolio.
The mix of business written also highlights the flexibility of the captive model. Among short-tail classes, property and casualty catastrophe business accounted for almost half of all business written, followed by warranty and residual value, and property damage and business interruption. Within long-tail business, general liability represented the largest segment, ahead of workers’ compensation and professional liability.
Underwriting performance has remained consistently strong. The average combined ratio for captives remained below 80% throughout the three-year period 2021-2023, while Class 1 and Class 3 captives recorded particularly stable results.
Captives are also playing an increasing role in cyber risk management. The number of captive cyber writers increased from 23 in 2020 to 34 in 2024, representing growth of almost 50% over five years. While the total declined slightly compared with 2023 (41), the longer-term trend highlights growing interest in using captive structures to manage cyber exposures alongside more traditional commercial risks.
Overall, the data illustrates a mature and well-diversified captive market. Bermuda continues to combine substantial financial resources with a broad range of captive structures and risk classes, reinforcing its position as one of the world’s leading domiciles for captive insurance.
Figures displayed are the latest available at the time of press.
For more news on Bermuda Risk Review 2026, click here.
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