Court appoints liquidators for failed Bermudian re/insurer
Three partners from PwC were appointed as joint liquidators of failed Bermudian re/insurer Custodian Life Ltd by the Supreme Court of Bermuda.
The trio are Arthur Wightman, Bermuda territory leader and regional markets leader of PwC in the Caribbean, together with Dan Schwarzmann and Edward MacNamara, who both have deep experience in restructuring and insolvency work.
The court order stated that, effective July 10, the new liquidators replaced outgoing joint provisional liquidators John Johnston, who retired this year as Deloitte’s Bermuda office managing partner, and Marcin Czarnocki, a partner at Deloitte Bermuda.
Mr Johnston and Edward Wilmott, also of Deloitte, were orginally appointed JPLs of Custodian Life in November 2023 with a remit to restructure the company. And in October last year the court ordered that the company be wound up following findings of extensive and longstanding regulatory breaches.
Mr Johnston and Mr Czarnocki are required by the court to make an application for their release by August 31, 2026.
In July 2025, the JPLs revealed that they and their staff, as well as individuals at the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the island’s financial services regulator, had been subjected to “profanities, personal attacks and highly inappropriate commentary”, amid calls from people identifying themselves as policyholders for an inquiry into the actions of the BMA.
The JPLs added that the delays in the investigation of Custodian’s affairs had been caused by the “deliberately obstructive conduct” of Joakim Samuelsson, Custodian’s sole director and principal, whom they accused of conducting a “campaign of misinformation” aimed at policyholders.
A lack of information on more than 60 per cent of policyholders from Mr Samuelsson had hindered progress, they added.
On March 27, the BMA issued a prohibition order against Mr Samuelsson, which indefinitely bars him from holding senior roles in the island’s insurance industry.
The BMA said Mr Samuelsson had “failed to conduct and manage the business of Custodian in a prudent manner and demonstrated a lack of competence, diligence and soundness of judgment”. His conduct was a direct cause of the company’s regulatory breaches and the resulting liquidation, the regulator added.
The BMA said the breaches it identified included: operation of improper trading practices; the use of an imprudent segregation model that failed to provide meaningful protection to policyholder assets; inaccurate and misleading statutory and public disclosures; failures to co-operate with an investigator; serious outsourcing and records-control failures that impeded the BMA’s regulatory oversight and the work of joint provisional liquidators, failures to co-operate with the joint provisional liquidators; and failure to comply court with orders.
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