Aegon calls October vote to leave Bermuda for Delaware

Royal Gazette Bermuda Re reports that Aegon has called a virtual extraordinary general meeting for October 8, at which shareholders will vote on moving the group's legal home from Bermuda to Delaware and renaming the parent company Transamerica Inc. The move, which Aegon aims to complete by 2028, would unwind the group-supervisor role the Bermuda Monetary Authority took on only in 2023, when Aegon shifted its legal seat from the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Aegon describes Transamerica as its largest business and the main contributor to group profit and cashflow; it reported first-half net income of 608 million euros, about $704 million, and Aegon has agreed to sell its UK insurance platform. Moving the legal seat to Delaware would make the parent company's address match the geography of its earnings.

Bermuda is not erased by the vote. Aegon owns Transamerica Life (Bermuda) Ltd, a Bermudian-incorporated insurer for international high-net-worth clients with more than $6.3 billion in assets, branches in Hong Kong and Singapore, and an office in Dubai; the group's own Bermuda office has grown from one employee in 2023 to six by March 2025, after earlier aiming for ten by the end of that year. Royal Gazette has asked Aegon what the move would mean for that office, the subsidiary, and the BMA's supervisory role; the report does not include an answer.

The BMA's group-supervisor role came with the 2023 redomiciliation; a Delaware legal seat would presumably shift that supervision into the US regulatory framework, and if shareholders approve and the 2028 completion goes ahead, the BMA's relationship with Aegon would narrow to the Bermudian subsidiary rather than the group.

The narrowing comes against a busy year on the island's register, where this publication's files show Bermuda added 42 entities to its register through July; entity registrations do not by themselves create a group-supervision franchise, and Aegon's exit suggests the market for that supervision is thinner than this year's 42-entity tally implies.