Speaking to International Adviser, Marr said: “We need other licences to continue to have access to the market. If you just sat on the Isle of Man your position would decline over time, we will continue to operate there within the constraints of what we can do.
He added: “It’s not just about the Isle of Man rules, which are not a million miles away from what the Bahamas requires.”
The company said in a statement on Thursday that establishing a licensed presence in the Bahamas provides the group with an “important regional presence”.
Hansard Worldwide Limited (HWL) has been granted an external insurance licence by the Insurance Commission of the Bahamas (ICB) and expects to commence trading in the latter part of 2018.
It will provide portable investment-linked insurance products to mobile, internationally-minded clients.
J.S. Johnson, a long-established insurance agency in the Bahamas, has been appointed as the insurance manager to HWL.
The Isle of Man will remain the company’s headquarters, with HWL operating alongside Hansard International.
External relationships
Marr said; “We’ve been thinking about our strategy for more than two years now and we see the benefits of having more external relationships like the one we already have with Union Insurance Co in the Middle East.
“With Hansard Worldwide, we are looking at replicating this type of partnership primarily focused on the Latin America market, but not exclusively.”
The product range, very similar to Hansard International’s existing line-up, will be reinsured back to the Isle of Man with Hansard International acting as the reinsurer.
Marr said the long-term plan is for Hansard International to have less direct insurance business and more reinsurance business and that there would be a lot of new back office systems upgrade work over the next 12 months as part of this new approach.
“We’re still very positive about the international markets with more and more expats and the number of wealthy in the high affluent zone growing.”
Bahamas ‘ticked the boxes’
In the research to find another jurisdiction, Marr said the US-focused Bahamas was geographically a good place to target more business in Latin America, where all the big financial services players are American.
The Bahamas as a jurisdiction ticked many boxes, he said, including rule of law, infrastructure, regulatory regime, how commercial and resilient it is and its very supportive approach to new businesses.
Marr cited “broker on-boarding requirements” which are set at a high regulatory level in Bahamas and the equivalent key information document (Kid), which the local regulator also requires.
He added that the Isle of Man regulator from this year has started requiring an annual face-to-face review with all the life companies, giving an insight into business plans and financial strength measures, and Hansard did this earlier in the year.
Maria Madrid says:
The Isle of Man financial regulator (FSC) is being forced into improving and tightening its previously sloppy regulatory role … and secrecy is no longer an option.
Well overdue – but far too late for thousands of investors (many elderly people) who have lost their life savings in nefarious and poorly regulated Isle of Man investment funds.