The UK Wants to Be a Captive Insurance Hub — So Why Are Brokers Still Failing Customers?

The UK has decided it wants a bigger slice of the captive insurance market. In July 2026, the PRA and FCA jointly proposed a new captive insurance regime designed to make Britain a serious competitor to Bermuda, Guernsey and Luxembourg. The pitch is straightforward: attract more captives, generate more premium income, and position London as a global insurance centre again.

It's an ambitious plan. It's also a plan that says nothing about a problem sitting in plain sight: basic policyholder protection is still failing at the retail level, right now, in this same regulatory system.

Two stories, one regulator

On the same regulatory calendar, the FCA issued a much less flattering update. Customers of Anthony Jones (UK) Limited were told to check their insurance policies after the broker agreed to stop all regulated activity from 9 July 2026.

That means AJL can no longer:

Sell new insurance policies
Offer renewals
Provide advice to new or existing customers

Anyone who bought cover through AJL now has to contact their insurer directly, dig out their policy schedule, and confirm two things nobody should have to confirm after paying for insurance: whether the policy is actually valid, and whether their payments were ever received.

This is not a hypothetical failure. It is customers left to do compliance work that a regulated intermediary was supposed to have handled.

The gap the growth strategy doesn't address

Here's the tension. The captive insurance proposal is about attracting institutional capital — corporates setting up their own insurance vehicles to manage risk more efficiently. It's a legitimate, well-reasoned play for growth and competitiveness.

But growth strategies don't fix distribution problems. They don't guarantee that a broker selling policies to ordinary consumers is solvent, competent, or even still operating properly. AJL's customers didn't lose confidence in a captive structure — they lost confidence in the basic chain between paying a premium and having cover in place.

If the UK wants to be trusted as a sophisticated insurance hub, both ends of the market need to hold up:

The wholesale end — captives, reinsurance, institutional risk transfer.
The retail end — ordinary brokers selling ordinary policies to people who assume, reasonably, that their cover is valid.

Right now, the second end is showing cracks the regulator is still cleaning up case by case.

What customers are left to do

For anyone caught in a situation like AJL's, the FCA's guidance is sensible but puts the burden squarely back on the customer:

Contact the insurer or underwriter named on your policy schedule directly — not the broker.
Confirm your policy is valid and premiums were actually received.
If you're unhappy with the broker's conduct, complain directly to the firm first.
If there's no resolution within 8 weeks, escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

This is a reasonable process. It is not, however, a substitute for a market where this situation shouldn't need to happen in the first place.

Ambition without accountability is just marketing

None of this means the captive insurance regime is a bad idea. It probably isn't. But regulators publishing growth strategies in one release and consumer protection warnings in another, without connecting the two, sends a mixed signal.

You cannot build a reputation as a serious international insurance hub while retail customers are still being told, mid-2026, to personally verify whether their broker actually paid their premium to the insurer.

Confidence in a market is built from the ground up. If the foundation — ordinary policyholders trusting that their broker did their job — is shaky, no amount of institutional-grade regulation at the top will cover for it.

Key takeaways

The PRA and FCA have proposed a new captive insurance regime to strengthen the UK's competitiveness in the global insurance market.
At the same time, customers of broker Anthony Jones (UK) Limited were told to independently verify their policies after the firm stopped all regulated activity.
Basic retail protection failures and top-tier growth ambitions are happening in the same regulatory system, at the same time.
A credible insurance hub needs both ends of the market working — institutional capital at the top, and reliable, accountable brokers at the bottom.
Growth strategy and consumer protection cannot be treated as separate conversations.