The practice of companies establishing subsidiaries to insure their own risks directly without accessing the commercial insurance market dates back more than a century. However, the captive insurance industry began to take off in the 1960s, and Bermuda set itself up as the original home for the offshore segment.
As the effects of the credit crisis continue to reverberate around the world there is an increased reliance on transaction banking to add value and deliver greater operational efficiency across the industry. For corporates, freeing up trapped liquidity in the supply chain and having the right technology and the right banking relationship is crucial to achieving this enhanced efficiency. This debate is sponsored by Citi but independently edited and written.
In many parts of the world, the global economy is being driven as much by trade in information, ideas and services,as by trade in physical goods. Organisations that were able to achieve success and predominance through sheer productivity and massive scale are now fewer and far between. Increasingly, it is the ability to think laterally, to operate on an agile basis, to react to global trends quickly and, above all, to innovate that will determine the sustainability of an organisation in future.