Passion project
Collin Anderson has always been torn between his professional passions for insurance and public policy.
Even at university, he did enough courses in both subjects that he could have gained dual degrees in insurance and political science. In his professional life, he has moved
between insurance as an underwriter, administrator and regulator, and public policy, where he reached the highest levels of the Bermuda civil service.
Now, as the new director of policy for the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR), Anderson seems to have found the found the ideal job which joins his twin passions.
“Collin’s broad experience, encompassing public policy, regulation, legislation, executive management, property and casualty insurance and international affairs, makes him a perfect fit for this role,” ABIR chief executive officer John Huff said when the appointment was announced.
Pina Albo, chair of ABIR and CEO of Hamilton, added: “It speaks to the depth of talent we have in Bermuda that we were able to recruit such an ideal candidate locally.”
Anderson, who is in his 40s, has been making a mark since he was in school.
The Berkeley Institute alumnus was a Queen’s Scout and represented Bermuda internationally as a debater. A United World College scholar, he became the second recipient of ACE’s (now Chubb) Robert Clements Insurance Scholarship when he attended the College of Insurance, now part of St John’s University, in New York.
He spent five years at ACE and was underwriting political risk in London when he was offered a job as deputy director of the government’s Health Insurance Department (HID), which was then going through a very public period of disarray. Anderson was rapidly promoted to director—before he was 30—and engineered a dramatic turnaround of the department.
The hybrid public-private business model and processes he implemented remain in place today, he says with pride.
After eight years at HID, Anderson became an assistant director of insurance supervision at the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) which, he says, was one of the happiest times of his professional career.
“The best thing about working at the BMA was the amazing team, probably one of the best teams I’ve seen in Bermuda—one of the best teams, period, and I have worked on both sides of the Atlantic.
“It's a diverse team, extremely high performing, brilliant in terms of their intellectual capital—and they have delivered. That’s the important thing. The BMA has delivered for Bermuda with Solvency II equivalence and NAIC reciprocal and qualified jurisdictions.”
After four years there, Anderson heard the clarion call of public policy again and returned to the Bermuda government where he spent eight years as a permanent secretary, the last six of them at the Economy and Labour Ministry.
This enabled him to see first-hand how government worked at the highest level and he helped drive through immigration reform, building on previous experience of working on health reform.
“You can’t get anything better than that,” he said. “That’s a huge advantage of working for government, the ability to lead substantial change all the way through to implementation, and I’ve done that.”
Tackling the tax quandary
The last project Anderson undertook for the Bermuda government—the introduction of Corporate Income Tax—may have been the most economically risky of all but so far, it seems to be working.
When virtually all the world’s governments agreed on a 15 percent corporate income tax for multinationals, Bermuda was in a dilemma.
The cornerstone of the Island’s international business sector was the pledge not to impose a tax on profits, but the framers of the global minimum tax said that if one country did not collect the tax, another could, making implementation unavoidable.
Anderson was given the task of coordinating Bermuda’s approach and, with close collaboration between industry and government, the Island was able to pass the Corporate Income Tax legislation. While much work still needs to be done, the tax will come into effect next year.
Anderson says fears that international companies would leave Bermuda as a result have not materialised, and it is possible some companies will come to Bermuda from jurisdictions that run the risk of being blacklisted.
But, Anderson says, the bigger opportunity for Bermuda is economic.
“There are opportunities to reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business,” he said. “ABIR members are particularly interested in lowering their cost of doing business and the Corporate Income Tax, as opposed to trying to do some form of the global minimum tax, provides us with a lot more flexibility to introduce things such as qualified refundable tax credits.
“What that means is that for companies that are making investments in Bermuda, there is the opportunity for them to have meaningful tax offsets that help Bermuda to remain attractive. ABIR will continue to provide input on this,” he explained.
Meeting the movers and shakers
While Anderson expects to be spending time running the Bermuda office while Huff divides his time between Washington, Bermuda and flying the flag at international regulatory conferences, the new director of policy was due to get the chance to meet many important players when ABIR held its annual event in Brussels in September.
ABIR will share its most recent statistics of what the ABIR member companies contribute to the Bermuda and global economies.
“The industry has had an excellent financial year, and the statistics should show that our footprint in Bermuda is continuing to expand and our spending has continued its upward trajectory,” Anderson said.
“We have the opportunity to be in Brussels to talk about how much the Bermuda insurance market is contributing globally,” he stated.
“The Premier, industry and the BMA will be speaking and it will show what John Huff calls the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ working together. “It’s a pleasure for us to be able to facilitate that level of dialogue.”
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