Bermuda's insurance regulator has said he hopes to cooperate more closely with regulators in other countries, including the UK's FSA, according to reports.
The move could lower the costs insurers face from having to work with multiple regulators.
Jeremy Cox, superintendent of the insurance supervisory division of the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), Bermuda's financial services regulator, said the country is hoping to move toward a mutual regulation standard, where regulators would rely more on one another's work.
Currently, an insurer with operations in both Bermuda and London may be regulated by both the FSA and the BMA, however, under the proposed standard, an insurer based primarily in Bermuda would have the BMA as the primary regulator.
David Strachan, the FSA's sector leader for insurance said is was making "extremely good progress" in this respect.
Strachan said the conditions the UK would look for before mutual recognition include: existence of a broadly consistent regulatory framework; some convergence in regulatory practices; a strong line of open communication underpinned by a memorandum laying out how information can be exchanged; and an understanding that a global group should be regulated as a whole, and that would generally fall to the 'home' regulator, or where the company is based.
Both Cox and Strachan sat on a panel of regulators speaking at the World Insurance Forum, a gathering of insurance investors and executives that finished in Bermuda last week.
