Cayman’s largest conference, the Cayman Captive Forum, which is held at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman from Tuesday to Thursday this week, is attracting a record number of attendees with 1,176 delegates, according to the event organiser, the Insurance Managers Association of Cayman.
During the three days, the event features educational sessions covering prevalent and emerging issues in the insurance and financial industry.
“We are very pleased with the exceptional growth in attendance and support from all sectors of the industry,” said Clayton Price, IMAC chairman. “The 2010 Forum reached a new high level mark with the number of attendees exceeding a thousand registrants and 2011 is larger still. As a result of the forum committee’s tenacity during 2011 to develop informative tutorial sessions in conjunction with best in class networking events, this year’s events are proving to be the best in both content as well as the number of attendees.”
Nearly one third of the delegates are current or prospective captive owners and 27 per cent are first time visitors to the Cayman Captive Forum. In total, more than 800 overseas guests will attend the event. Many of these overseas guests also bring a spouse or members of their family, which easily doubles the number of visitors to Grand Cayman, Mr. Price said.
Pre-forum sessions on Tuesday included a tutorial on healthcare captives hosted by the International Center for Captive Insurance Education that was available to ICCIE students worldwide via live broadcast webinar.
The second and third day sessions of the Forum today and tomorrow will feature a welcome address by Deputy Premier Julianna O’Connor-Connolly on behalf of the Cayman Islands government followed by this year’s keynote speaker, Dan Burrus, a leading technology forecaster and business strategist. In total 34 different topics will be covered by over 80 speakers and panelists at the three day conference.
The Cayman Captive Forum is the largest annual conference held in the Cayman Islands and the largest offshore captive conference, according to IMAC. The event also vies for the title of the largest captive insurance conference in the world, as it is in close competition with the state of Vermont’s conference.
IMAC estimates the captive insurance industry attracts about 6,000 client visitors per year to Cayman, resulting in an estimated 18,300 room nights, not least due to the success of the annual conference. In addition to the forum, several meetings are held in the Cayman Islands annually by each captive.
“The Cayman Captive Forum is a great opportunity for the two key industries of finance and tourism to come together in a mutually supportive way,” said Mike Ryan, owner and operator of the Ritz-Carlton, the event venue.
“Having a best in class facility like the Ritz-Carlton makes bringing the best in the world to a forum like IMAC’s a lot easier and hopefully during their stay in Cayman they find it interesting and attractive enough that they want to come back and stay on their own for business or pleasure, creating a positive cycle of reinforcement.”
IMAC is a nonprofit organisation run by the insurance managers of the Cayman Islands and has 27 member firms who manage approximately 730 captives with assets of over US$58 billion and annual premiums of close to US$10 billion. A captive insurance company is a company established by a single parent or a group of companies to insure the risks of organisations affiliated with the owner of the captive.
About 35 per cent of the captives in Cayman are healthcare captives, followed by workers’ compensation schemes (22 per cent).
Cayman’s captive industry as a whole employs a total of 300 staff and, according to IMAC estimates, contributes in excess of US$83 million to Cayman’s annual GDP consisting of US$10 million in annual fees paid by international clients to the Cayman government, $61 million in fees paid to Caymanian service providers such as insurance managers, lawyers, auditors and bankers, and $12 million in indirect revenue for hotels, restaurants and other service providers from international clients visiting Cayman for director meetings.
The aim of the association is to act both as regulatory liaison with the Cayman Islands government and to promote the Cayman Islands as the domicile of choice for captive insurance companies. Both captive insurance companies and the service providers that support the industry on Island are members of IMAC.
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