Within walking distance
Bermuda’s size has not constrained the scale of its ambitions. From a few streets in Hamilton, a market has developed that connects global re/insurers with brokers, capital providers, lawyers, actuaries, modellers, accountants and regulators.
For international investors arriving on the island, the unique part is not simply who is there, but how quickly they can reach them.
For Vincent Prabis, managing principal of Hiscox Capital Partners, Hiscox Re, that proximity remains an important part of Bermuda’s appeal: “Having everybody sitting within a mile radius is fantastic,” he told Bermuda:Re+ILS.
A short visit can take an investor considerably further than a meeting with an individual manager. Many investors allocate across multiple managers, and Bermuda allows them to look behind those relationships and engage with many of the businesses and specialists supporting the portfolios themselves.
“When investors visit, they can, of course, meet all of their managers. But that’s not where it stops. They meet the entire ecosystem that sits behind those managers, the reinsurer, the fronter, the cat modelling firm, the brokers, all the way to the lawyers who are so important to what we do”.
Then there is the regulator: “At the top, you have the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), our forward-thinking regulator, which investors love having access to.”
It is an advantage created partly by geography, but sustained by what has accumulated within it. Bermuda’s re/insurance market has developed specialist expertise across disciplines that become increasingly important as investors look more closely at how risk is selected, structured and managed.
That becomes particularly apparent in ILS. Third-party capital may sit behind the risk, but the work surrounding it extends from underwriting and catastrophe analytics to claims, reserving and finance. Prabis describes investors having the ability to engage directly with underwriters, claims professionals, actuaries and catastrophe modelling teams, which enhances this understanding of the class and the risks.
Specialised talent
The same depth extends beyond individual firms: “Bermuda’s talent pool is remarkable because it reaches into every part of what we do.
“A fund accountant or reinsurance accountant is not just an accountant; these are specialist roles shaped by the technical demands of the market. They may not be widely understood outside re/insurance, but they are absolutely critical to how the industry functions,” Prabis said.
It is an easily overlooked distinction. Re/insurance relies on professions that exist elsewhere, but which develop a particular specialism when immersed in the industry. Accounting, law and analytics acquire another layer of specialism when the subject matter is catastrophe risk, reinsurance structures or the movement of collateral.
The legal community is a case in point. “We have some of the best lawyers for reinsurance, for wording, for structuring, in Bermuda.”
Collectively, those skills make Bermuda more than a domicile for transactions. Prabis describes investors arriving on the island and recognising “that there is a real vibrant community dedicated to reinsurance and ILS.”
Regulation remains fundamental, but the market that has developed around it gives international capital access to the people responsible for making the machinery work.
The talent pipeline
The question for Bermuda now is how that concentration of knowledge continues to develop.
Much of the island’s expertise has been built over decades, through successive generations working across underwriting, broking, law, actuarial science, finance and other specialist roles. Prabis now sees a more deliberate effort to ensure Bermudians themselves have routes into that market.
“It’s always been there, but you can now definitely tell that there’s a welcome push to develop local talent,” he said.
That push is visible at company level. Hiscox Re hosted six Bermudian interns this summer, including two who had previously interned with the business, on a programme led by Prabis.
But Prabis sees something broader happening across the island, with industry organisations and employers increasingly trying to expose young Bermudians to the range of careers available within re/insurance.
“There is a concerted effort by the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR) and a general push by Bermuda ILS. All those trade organisations are really working to show local talents that you just need to push the door.”
That wording is revealing because one of the challenges is not simply training people for established professions. It is making the breadth of the market visible in the first place.
The re/insurance industry contains highly specialised careers that can be difficult to understand from outside it. Prabis touched on fund accounting, reinsurance law, catastrophe modelling, underwriting and claims before even reaching the more familiar actuarial and finance disciplines.
For young Bermudians considering where their skills might fit, greater exposure to those professions can widen the possibilities considerably.
“There are an ample number of companies that are willing to teach young graduates how to access the various jobs we can do,” Prabis says.
Recent participation suggests those efforts are gaining traction. Prabis recalls an ABIR-sponsored event attended by the Premier and representatives from education and government, alongside around 60 young Bermudians undertaking internships with brokers, insurers and reinsurers on the island, which he described as “fantastic to see”.
There is still demand for people. Prabis is clear that Bermuda’s specialist labour market has not reached the point where the job is finished: “There’s still a need, and there is a very healthy market for whoever wants to join our industry.”
For Bermuda, that need and opportunity sit alongside one another.
The island has already established the ingredients that make its re/insurance market difficult to reproduce: regulatory infrastructure, international capital and, within an unusually small area, specialists who understand the peculiarities of transferring complex risk.
Its next challenge is not to invent that ecosystem again, but to broaden the pool of people capable of carrying it forward.
For the investors walking between meetings on Front Street, Bermuda’s concentration of expertise is immediately visible. The work now under way to bring more Bermudians and international talent into the industry will help determine who occupies those offices and what expertise sits behind their doors in the decades to come.
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Vincent Prabis is managing principal of Hiscox Capital Partners. To find out more about Hiscox Capital Partners, visit www.hiscoxre.com.
Read the full Bermuda:Re+ILS Annual 2026 here.
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