BMA chief Craig Swan tells annuity conference the regulator holds about 50 actuaries

Craig Swan used this week's Bermuda International Life and Annuity Conference to describe a regulator rebuilt around the market it supervises, with about 50 actuaries on staff alongside the model, asset and risk-management specialists the authority has brought in to keep pace with the business. Against the 343 full-time employees in the BMA's 2025 annual report, that actuarial bench is roughly one employee in seven. The more consequential work, though, sits in the exit Swan described and in the two documents now arriving to test it.

The objectives of supervision and regulation had not changed, Swan said; the machinery had. The authority enhanced its framework, strengthened governance, tightened valuations, capital requirements and liquidity, added asset approval for affiliated assets and, alongside block approvals, widened its engagement with overseas regulators on the reasoning that only an end-to-end view of the risk is worth having.

The sharpest part of Swan's remarks was the exit: when an overseas regulator raises concerns over a transaction, the BMA is prepared to step back — a stance that costs the island a filing in the short run and buys the credibility its capital regime runs on, a trade now being tested from the other side. As this publication reported in September, the NAIC has instructed its Life Risk-Based Capital working group to develop a charge for cessions outside reciprocal jurisdictions, which puts jurisdiction risk inside the capital formula and turns Bermuda's earned recognition into something closer to a balance-sheet advantage.

Biltir chief executive Suzanne Williams, who hosted the session, framed it around the scrutiny Bermuda has drawn from global standard-setters over the years. Swan's answer was a definition of the business the island wants: companies taking a long-term view and holding policyholder protection in high regard, rather than ones that are merely profit-driven. Regulation that is "sufficiently robust", he said, is worth some attrition. "We may have lost a few, but for the most part, what we see is companies that may not have chosen Bermuda in the past, are actually coming."

The coverage leaves that claim unfinished, breaking off mid-sentence on the growth of total market assets between 2023 and 2025 so the comparison arrives without its number. Two documents will test the specialist bench sooner than any headcount. AM Best's August warning that reserve credits across offshore annuity reinsurance are growing faster than the collateral behind them is one; the BMA's own resolution consultation, which names who would run a failed insurer while deferring the powers that decide who gets paid, is the other.