Eastern Caribbean

Axco provides details on the life insurance sector including the Eastern Caribbean market participants, reinsurance and distribution channels. The reports describe classes of business from both individual and group life such as whole life, endowment, term life and unit-linked.
Information on non-life classes for example critical illness and private medical insurance.

The report describes the public and private healthcare system in the Eastern Caribbean, the scope of cover, accessibility financing and provides an analysis of how the public and private systems complement each other.

Axco reports on the three pillars of the Eastern Caribbean pension provision.

• State pension benefits including benefit calculations and eligibility criteria 
• Workplace pension provision; types of schemes calculations eligibility and; tax implications
• Voluntary individual pension provision, type of products and tax implications

The Eastern Caribbean report provides an in-depth analysis of the regulatory framework governing social security as well as details on financing and eligibility. Information includes but is not limited to

• state pensions,
• permanent disability benefit
• occupational accident and disease
• maternity and paternity payments 

The insurance sectors of the countries covered by this report mirror those of many other Caribbean islands, in that they comprise a proliferation of agency operations sharing the market with a relatively small number of largely Caribbean-owned insurance companies. The dominant regulatory issue is the slowly evolving framework for a single regional insurance authority and the concomitant legal cornerstones, such as solvency and capital deposits, which must be set down in order to establish this. This initiative is being supervised by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank which is the central bank for eight countries, five of which are those covered by this report and which share a currency, namely the Eastern Caribbean dollar. The proposed regional regulator is the Eastern Caribbean Financial Services Regulatory Commission ....

The Caribbean region has been slow to develop its occupational and private pension structures particularly in the smaller islands where little or no pension legislation currently exists. Much of the state provision is deemed generous and is thought to be a drag factor in sales of private pensions.

Recent legislation across the ECCU bloc is reportedly developing at a slow pace because few regulators are prepared to make major changes until the proposed regional insurance regulatory authority is in place. Nevertheless, most regulators have delegated powers to introduce ....

Healthcare is viewed as a non-life class in the region, but largely written by regional life insurers.

The provision of free, or at very low cost, public treatment and hospital care has meant that historically there has been little interest in private treatment or private medical insurance (PMI). Long waiting times for consultations and operations, limited local facilities and services, and the need to obtain overseas treatment for some conditions has led to some growth in ....