Comment - Looking good.

(From Reinsurance)

Byline: Henry Keeling, chief executive of reinsurance operations, XL Capital.

As those of you brave enough to step out in EC3 in February may already be aware, I was recently asked to address the Insurance Institute of London on the subject of 'How Bermuda looks to me now'. Being something of a veteran of the Bermudian reinsurance market, and not generally known for shying away from an expectant audience, it may have seemed that I was the natural choice to impart my observations on this subject.

However, despite feeling flattered, I had reservations about this opportunity.

It is not that Bermuda is not a significant enough subject to warrant extensive examination - it is and it does. But the often implicit adversarial context in which this subject is usually placed helps perpetuate a myth that Bermuda exists as an entirely separate market.

I am constantly reminded that the (re)insurance market is now truly global, with all the inter-dependencies, co-financing and distribution of risk that the word connotes. While I ruminated on this, my attitude warmed to delivering a speech that would underscore these points with a message that Bermuda looks much the same as any other insurance market now (admittedly with a slightly warmer climate than most).

Yet, to state that Bermuda is a market like any other, in the wake of an increasingly homogenising global economy, does not do full justice to the topic. After all, Bermuda's meteoric rise over the past decade is not just an accident of circumstance, but testament to its business, fiscal and regulatory culture. With this in mind, I set to evaluating Bermuda's blooming health in order to identify the factors that make it thrive, and which could be applied to other markets.