Offshore finance has grown in spite of post-2008 attempts to tame it. Between 2010 and 2024, companies' total offshore assets grew half as fast again as world GDP, more than doubling in nominal terms to $64trn. By 2024, 31% of the outstanding stock of international corporate bonds had been issued in offshore centres—a record, up from a post-crisis trough of 24% in 2010. As Jason Sharman of Cambridge has put it, "secrecy was less important than people thought it was." Lax regulation also mattered less than reputation: havens are often better regulated than rich countries in areas like reinsurance, private credit and emerging-market wealth.
Bermuda hosts a thriving "Bermuda triangle" of life insurers, reinsurers and private-asset managers like Apollo and KKR. American life insurers cede liabilities and assets to Bermuda-based reinsurers, which fund their holdings of illiquid private investments (private equity, private credit, property, VC) with less capital than would be required onshore, and use internal models to match annuity liabilities. Bermuda holds $1.5trn in reinsurance assets—about 4% of the global insurance industry's total and 15% of worldwide reinsurance capital.
The Cayman Islands was struck off the Financial Action Task Force's "grey list" in 2023. Its reinsurance assets quadrupled since 2020 to over $100bn. A 2019 law brought previously unregistered private-asset funds under the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority; the number of such funds rose from fewer than 13,000 in 2020 to nearly 18,000 by 2026. The Caymans and British Virgin Islands together hold $192bn in Chinese overseas portfolio investment (June 2025), three-fifths as much as in America and almost five times more than in Britain.
To access foreign capital despite China's capital controls, Chinese firms set up "variable-interest entities" (VIEs) in the Caymans. A series of further vehicles holds contractual rights to profits from a Chinese operating company. When American investors buy shares in US-listed Alibaba or European VCs back ByteDance, they pass money to a Cayman VIE. Chinese authorities are now trying to curb VIEs: Moonshot AI, a tech firm, is reportedly unwinding its Cayman VIE and going public in Hong Kong instead.
In the emerging world, offshore is "the next best thing" to secure property rights. Dubai drew 9,800 migrating millionaires in 2025, more than any other jurisdiction (per Henley & Partners). Offshore links between Africa and Asia are rising. The 2026 Iran war dulled Dubai's shine but not that of offshore finance overall.
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