LUXEMBOURG- The cross-border life insurance and employee benefits consultancy team of Luxembourg consultants JBI Associates has joined Deloitte & Touche in a bid to capitalise on Europe’s growing cross border life and pensions industry.

James Ball, founder of JBI Associates will head the new outfit, JBI Deloitte, which will combine Deloitte & Touche Luxembourg’s contacts with JBI’s insurance consulting and employee benefits experience.

The move involves a transfer of staff as opposed to a takeover and the newly-created entity forms the nucleus for Deloitte & Touche's expansion into an industry that it little experience of.

The two have joined forces as a consequence of the restructuring of the Milliman Global network eighteen months ago. Bacon & Woodrow withdrew from the network following the announcement of the merger of its employee benefits practice with Hewitt Associates.

This shake up resulted in Bacon & Woodrow’s insurance consulting practice, particularly in the UK, joining Deloitte & Touche.

Says JBI’s Gail Wilson: “we had worked a lot with Bacon & Woodrow in the UK and when the break-up happened there it mean that we lost a lot of our contacts and a reasonable stream of business.”

“We realised that we had lost a lot of the resources we had previously drawn upon in the Milliman Global network in Europe and it made more sense for us to review our network membership.”

Deloitte & Touche employs more than 700 in Luxembourg and provides accounting, auditing, tax and management consultancy services.