The Cayman Islands is toying with the idea of swapping staff between its financial regulator and private sector firms as part of a wider push to beef up capacity before the jurisdiction makes its pitch to US state insurance regulators.
Premier André Ebanks, who doubles as financial services minister, floated the concept at the ReConnect reinsurance conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman on 17 April.
At the event he confirmed the territory would lodge its Qualified Jurisdiction status application with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) by the end of the second quarter.
“We also need to seriously think about how we’re gonna help each other. Should we now have secondments between the public and private sector?” Ebanks asked delegates.
“So we learn each other better. So the intelligence grows, even ourselves in the ministry.”
The secondment idea lands alongside a Cabinet-backed tweak to the Public Authorities Act that would free the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) from civil service pay bands.
A new reinsurance specialist seat is also being created inside the ministry, and Ebanks signalled that outside consultants could be pulled in to help push the application over the line.
“We have to increase our bench strength,” he said.
Staffing muscle is no sideshow in the QJ status review. The NAIC’s playbook calls for on-site interviews with supervisory staff and a look at organisational and personnel practices, benchmarked against its Financial Regulation Standards and Accreditation Program.
All seven names already on the NAIC’s Qualified Jurisdiction list, Bermuda, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Ireland among them, run dedicated reinsurance supervisory teams.
Regulator-to-regulator swaps are not uncharted territory.
The New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) struck a deal with the Bank of England in January 2025 on the Transatlantic Regulatory Exchange, an international programme that lets DFS and its peers trade staff to pool resources and regulatory know-how.
Those placements run for at least six months and can stretch to a year if both sides sign off.
Public-private secondments have deeper roots in the United Kingdom.
UK Government Investments has run an Insight Secondment Programme with Lazard, Rothschild, PwC, Deloitte and HSBC, while Financial Conduct Authority staff have done stints at international bodies and competition regulators.
Ebanks pitched the Cayman version as a two-way knowledge trade rather than a plug for empty desks, arguing it would sharpen the ministry’s own grasp of the reinsurance market it is trying to court.
He wrapped up with a nudge for the industry to close ranks before the filing goes in.
“If you all wanna now enter into the official season of reinsurance in this country, we need to do it… as part of a team,” he said.
