Insurance
and Pensions
See Offshore Business
Review – Insurance for a more general
treatment of captive insurance companies.
Insurance companies in Gibraltar operate within
the overall structure of the EU's Third Life
and Non-Life Directives. The Commissioner of
Insurance regulates and licences insurance companies
in Gibraltar under the Insurance Companies Ordinance
1987. (Further information on other legislation
pertaining to insurance can be found here.)The
issue of a licence depends on the expertise,
business integrity and funding of the applicant.
An insurer must maintain a guarantee fund related
to its level of business; minimum guidlelines
(as in EU legislation) currently vary from EUR200,000
to EUR400,000.
Insurance companies licensed in Gibraltar must
maintain a place of business in Gibraltar. Annual
financial statements must be submitted to the
Financial Services Commission within 6 months
of the expiration of each fiscal year. Any intended
change in company control must first be approved
by the Commission.
See
Offshore Tax Regimes
and Law of Offshore
for further details of the regulatory regime,
the licensing process and the offshore tax possibilities
for insurance companies in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar
has fully implemented EU insurance directives,
and under the 'common passport' rules Gibraltar
insurance companies can therefore write business
into the EU without needing to establish a presence
in the jurisdiction concerned (see below for
more detail). Taken together with Gibraltar's
other advantages (well-educated, English-speaking,
low-cost, available labour force; comparatively
cheap fee structure; good telecommunications;
very competitive tax structure) it would seem
that this should encourage the development of
a European insurance marketing sector in Gibraltar,
although this has yet to happen on a significant
scale.
Gibraltar captives can write business anywhere
within the EU, and there is provision for both
protected cell companies and rent-a-captives.Comprehensive
legislation for protected cell companies was
passed in the House of Assembly in July 2001
as the Protected Cell Companies Ordinance. See
a detailed description of the new law in Law
of Offshore.
An initial fee of G£500 is payable with the
licence application to the Financial Services
Commission and an annual fee is payable thereafter,
at rates set by the Insurance Companies (Prescribed
Particulars) Regulations 1996 (£2,000
at the time of writing).
The
passporting of insurance and reinsurance mediation
from Gibraltar throughout the EEA came into
effect on January 15, 2005.
Passporting
rights arise under the single market directives,
and grant a person in the designated jurisdiction
the right to establish a branch in another EEA
state or to do business there on a cross-border
basis, subject to the fulfillment of the conditions
in the directive in question.
This
was the fourth passporting badge awarded to
Gibraltar, following insurance in 1997, banking
in 1999, and investment services in 2003.
According
to the Rock's financial services authorities,
the passporting of insurance and reinsurance
mediation was enabled by the passing of an amending
ordinance, the Financial Services (Insurance
Mediation) (Amendment) Ordinance 2004 in the
House of Assembly on December 22, 2004. The
Ordinance amended the Financial Services Ordinance
1989 in order to transpose into the law of Gibraltar
Directive 2002/92/EC of the European Parliament
and of the Council of December 9, 2002 on insurance
mediation.
The
Ordinance provided for the regulation of insurance
and reinsurance mediation, including such activities
as:
- Introducing,
proposing or carrying out other work preparatory
to the conclusion of contracts of insurance
or reinsurance;
- Concluding
contracts of insurance or reinsurance; and
- Assisting
in the administration and performance of
such contracts, in particular in the event
of a claim.
LOWTAX.NET
