Insurance

Insurance is about people paying premiums to insurance companies to protect against the financial impact of possible future events.

The Channel Islands insurance sector is a mixture of captive insurance companies and life or general business insurers. Captive insurance is where insurance companies are owned by non-insurance groups such as FTSE 100 companies. There are cost benefits to this approach: in an external insurance market, if one claimant has a problem everyone ends up paying more, whereas setting up your own company means the costs are based on your own claims experience. Firms setting up these companies will tend to use captive managers to run them as it is not cost effective to set up their own office.

Business developments

There is a small captive sector in Jersey but this has been a particular success story for Guernsey, where there are now over 600 regulated insurance entities. The island is a popular choice because it has the right infrastructure: an established pool of expertise along with a pragmatic level of regulation. Life insurance is also a large part of the insurance sector in the Channel Islands, and is mostly geared to expatriate individuals. For example, a UK resident with a contract outside the UK may wish to move their personal affairs offshore and this would include their pension. As offshore jurisdictions, the Channel Islands have the benefit of being outside the UK and EU but English speaking and well regulated.

Graduate opportunities

This sector employs professionals with a range of experience, both accounting and insurance professionals. Accounting staff would normally enter the industry after a training contract with an accounting firm. Once you start working in insurance, there are opportunities to study for Chartered Insurance Institute exams through study leave arrangements with your employer.

The work would appeal to someone who likes variety. Because you are working with clients  from a range of different businesses you don’t know what you will be doing from day to day. This could be presenting to senior management of FTSE 100 companies at board meetings, working with auditors on technical accounting issues, handling multimillion-pound claims, or underwriting insurance renewals.