History
'Fin re' has been around since at least the 1960s, when Lloyd's syndicates started sending money overseas as reinsurance premium for what were then called 'roll-overs' - multi-year contracts with specially-established vehicles in tax-light jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands. These deals were legal and approved by the UK tax-authorities. However they fell into disrepute after some years, partly because their tax-avoiding motivation became obvious, and partly because of a few cases where the overseas funds were siphoned-off or simply stolen.
More recently, the high-profile bankruptcy of the HIH group of insurance companies in Australia revealed that highly questionable transactions had been propping-up the balance-sheet for some years prior to failure. As of June 2006, General Re and others are being sued by the HIH liquidator in connection with the fraudulent practices.
In the life segment, fin re has been widely used in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Financial Reinsurance
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)