To: Members
From: Rob Leadbetter – Chairperson
Re: 12 month update at January 16, 2014.
We have been working with the new Insurance Law for over a year now and all indications are that it is meeting the requirements of our clients and advisors. The PIC legislation has been in place for some 9 months and although we had hoped the required regulations would have followed sooner we are optimistic that we will see something in the first quarter of 2014. The business plan change project we have been working on in conjunction with CIMA is nearing completion and again we hope to hear some positive news from our friends at CIMA shortly. In terms of #s for the year, CIMA reports that they have licensed an additional 12 companies in the fourth quarter bringing the total for the year to 41 new licensees. This brings our net total number of licensed entities to 765 as at December 31, 2013!!
Some of our greatest successes of the year occurred on the marketing front. We launched our new branding initiative, Clearly Better Business with a new booth and promotional items at the RIMS conference in LA this past April. One of our key objectives for the year was to change the way we communicated with the world; historically we had been primarily reactive to bad news or press about our industry and our islands. We wanted to change this, to be proactive and to share our successes rather than defend our failures or perceived failures! We issued 21 press releases in 2013, most of those going out on international wires as well as in the local media. We had 8 articles published in industry magazines and wrote extensively on our blog, LinkedIn group, twitter account and Facebook page. I encourage you all to like, friend and follow us on these various social media sites.
In addition to these communications, we partnered with two of our members on separate publications, the latter being the first Cayman developed captive industry magazine, which we launched at the Cayman Captive Forum in December. And if all that wasn’t enough, we also redesigned our website and launched that prior to year-end.
We finally published a code of conduct that had been in the works for a period of time for our full members. This document was posted on our website during the fourth quarter of this year and I encourage those members to share this with their employees and clients.
Our annual Cayman Captive Forum was again a roaring success with record attendees (close to 1400) making it again the largest conference to be hosted in Cayman annually as well as the largest captive centric conference in the world.
Finally the success of our forum allows us to continue to support our IMAC scholarship fund. To date we have raised in excess of $2 Million dollars and have supported financially 24 Caymanian students achieve post-secondary education. We were able to offer two scholarships in 2013; one to Erica Powell who is attending Florida International University studying Early childhood Education and secondly, to Tiffany Rankine studying Forensic science at the University of Tampa, in Tampa Florida. We look forward to following the progress of these two fine individuals as they pursue their post secondary education.
At this time I would like to thank the 2013 Executive committee for the tremendous work they have done in achieving these successes and in particular to three members who have decided to stand down from Exec this year.
Monique MacDonald our current secretary and first female Chairperson after six years of continuous service.
Steve Britton our fearless Marketing chair who was probably ready to step down a year a go but I encouraged or begged for him to see through the transition and vision he set for our marketing team three years ago.
And finally, Fiona Moseley who has served numerous terms on the Exec and most recently as our R&D committee chair.
This brings us to the 2014 edition of the IMAC Executive, we have many challenges still ahead of us and it is my intention to continue the focus on our core objectives, those being:Act as a liaison between our members, the industry and government and CIMA. With a new govt coming in half way through last year it gives us the unique opportunity to refocus the relationship that we have built over time and it is our intention to focus on these relationships as we see them being the keys to our success in the future.
Second, market our domicile as the #1 option for those seeking clearly better business and the desire for first-rate regulation and service providers.
Our 2014 Executive, consists of returning veterans in Kieran O’Mahony as vice chairman, Steven Gray as treasurer, Clayton Price as legislative and regulatory committee chair, Linda Haddleton as education chair, John Pitcairn as scholarship committee chair, Seamus Tivenan and Erin Brosnihan as co- chairs of the forum committee and myself as chairperson. In addition, we have three fresh faces in Jennifer Reid assuming the secretary role, JS De Jager taking the torch on the marketing committee and April Panton taking on the R&D committee chair.
I have all the confidence in the world that this team will bring even greater successes in 2014 and I look forward to meeting the challenges put before us over the next 12 months.