The sudden climbdown
by the IRS in February
removed the serious
threat to the well-being of
all onshore US captives.
Now, all US captive states
and respective captives
themselves can look
forward to putting into
effect the growth plans
that many of them had
shelved when the grim
prospect of tax muted
the benefits of onshore
domiciling.
In this issue, we speak to the coalition responsible
for forcing the IRS into retreat and find the US
captive market buoyed up by the withdrawal of
proposed IRS regulation and ready once again to
compete against the offshore captive domiciles
(page 10).
Although directly involved with finance, the captive
sector is not expected to suffer from the calamitous
economic effects of global market turbulence and
the credit crunch as have many other financial
sectors and, indeed, industries. As other sectors
dive for cover, captives need more than one hand
on which to count their blessings. For this issue’s
roundtable discussion (on page 14), we asked five
players in the investment management sector what
advice they would give to captives reappraising
their existing captive fund investment plans, given
the current soft market and disastrous market
conditions.
The last year has seen the steady growth in
US captive domiciles, and the overall number of
licensed US captives continues to grow unabated.
We provide a table of information on captive
domiciles, indicating the number of captive
licences they host, the year when their captive
legislation was introduced, recent updates to their
local captive regulation, plus capitalisation and tax
requirements (page 48).
This issue also takes a look at three Caribbean
captive domiciles popular with US parent
companies, the British Virgin Islands, Nevis and
Anguilla, noting their respective competitive
advantages and the different structures they attract.
Simon Owen of the Belmont Group explains why
2008 will see continued growth in the BVI (page
36), Derek Lloyd at AMS and Martin Eveleigh at
Atlas present a similar story for Nevis (page 42),
and Carlyle K. Rogers focuses on the benefits of
Anguilla as a captive domicile (page 40).
Record numbers of captives are gaining licences,
and pundits overwhelmingly expect this growth
to continue. Captive insurance in the US has a
promising future.
