DOCOsoft brings its innovative claims management technology to Bermuda

Bermuda has long occupied a pre-eminent position in the global insurance and reinsurance market, supporting the needs of the largest and most complex businesses and their risk. The beginnings of the Bermuda insurance market can be traced back to the 1950s when Fred Reiss coined the term captive. Since then, Bermuda has maintained its strength and presence globally as the captive domicile of choice, with over $24 billion in gross premiums written.

Bermuda’s critical mass as a center for captive companies really began building after a number of oil captives arrived on the island, concerned about political unrest in the Bahamas, where they had previously been based. As the captive model gained in popularity, leading brokers began setting up in Bermuda with a view to selling reinsurance to the island’s growing captive population. From the 1970s onwards, brokers encouraged more and more of their clients to set up Bermuda-based captives, and by the turn of the century around a third of all captives, more than a thousand companies in total, were based on the island.

The next wave of insurance companies in Bermuda was driven by the mid-80s liability crisis in the U.S. This led to the formation of ACE and XL in 1985 and 1986 respectively.  Another wave of insurance company formations in Bermuda occurred in late 1992 and early 1993, responding to capacity shortages for property catastrophe reinsurance following Hurricane Andrew.  The generation of Andrew quickly saw Bermuda grow to account for around a third of global property catastrophe capacity.

Further waves followed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and the devastating hurricane season of 2005.  In these ‘hot’ periods, Bermuda saw insurers and reinsurers formed on the island to meet other coverage needs in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In each successive wave of company formation, substantially more start-up capital was raised than in the preceding one. Meanwhile, established Bermuda insurers also raised new capital to add to underwriting capacity and strengthen their balance sheets. 

Innovation in the Bermuda market continued in the aftermath of the credit crisis of 2008, with Bermuda emerging as the global leader for Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) issuance. This has since become a well-established asset class with the Bermuda Stock Exchange listing over 90% of global market capital for outstanding ILS. 

While all of this was taking place, DOCOsoft was establishing itself as a market-leading provider of claims management systems to the Lloyd’s and London market. London has long had, and continues to have, a strong connection to Bermuda’s (re)insurance market. It made obvious sense to us at DOCOsoft to bring the benefits of our powerful and capable claims software solutions to the Bermuda market.

That’s how DOCOsoft CEO Aidan O’Neill and his colleagues came to be sponsoring and attending the Bermuda Risk Summit event in March 2023, spreading the word about what DOCOsoft can do for risk-related businesses with a presence on the island.

That first visit followed an initial engagement in the Bermuda market when DOCOsoft delivered a new claims management system based on ACORD GRLC messaging (ECOT and EBOT) for the Bermuda reinsurance subsidiary of a leading (re)insurance carrier which manages two Lloyd’s Syndicates.

Since then, DOCOsoft has been back in Bermuda several times, building and extending its Bermuda contact network in the world of claims and beyond. With a local representative now in place, in the form of the exceptionally well-connected Helen Souza, we’re back in March for the 2024 Risk Summit, at which we’ll be providing a demo of our market-leading claims technology solutions, as well hosting what looks set to be a well attended cocktail reception.

If you’re going to be in Bermuda any time from 8 March onwards, and you would like to know more about what DOCOsoft’s next-generation claims management solutions can do for your business, we’d love to tell you more. Email helen.souza@docosoft.com and we can get something in the diary.