While London-based firms are scampering to find their post-Brexit locations, British territory Gibraltar is luring European companies who want UK access once passporting rights are gone.
Gibraltar has so far received 26 license applications from insurance companies, fund managers, and financial technology firms, according to a report by
Institutional Investor. It said the applications are mostly from providers who want to be licensed to write regulated business under Gibraltarian law as well as from fund managers interested in alternative asset classes.
Among the draws are “protected cell company” rules in Gibraltar, which allow insurers to operate corporate structures and underwrite insurance risks while leaving profitability unaffected.
“We already have a lot of insurance firms in Gibraltar but we are looking to see how some of our products – protected cell companies, for example – can be used to support the life and pensions sector,” said Gibraltar’s commerce minister Albert Isola as quoted by the report.
Regulations in Gibraltar are also being reviewed in hopes of attracting life insurance groups who want to get a hold of their share of the growing bulk annuity market in the UK. As for passporting rights, Isola said the British government has assured that Gibraltar will not lose its equivalent regulatory status to the UK.
The Global Reinsurance Forum has reached out to the European Commission to ask for passporting rights to be kept. With Britain withdrawing from the European Union and without equivalent regulatory regimes, reinsurers want passporting arrangements to still be in place to allow them to sell services across the EU even without local operations.
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