How captives buy reinsurance and using reinsurance to protect your business will be the focus for a seminar hosted by one of Bermuda's top captive specialists at the 2008 RIMS (Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc.) conference in San Diego this week.

Scott Gemmell, vice-president of Marsh Management Services (Bermuda) Ltd. will be leading the session alongside clients Marie-Gemma Dequae, corporate risk manager of Bekaert Corp., and John McCarthy, ARM director of risk management at The Salvation Army, explaining how reinsurance can help buffer a captive or rent-a-captive against unexpected swings in loss frequency and severity, at the event.

Mr. Gemmell, who will be among four members from Marsh Captive Solutions, including three from the US, and numerous others from its Global Placement office, also based on the Island, went on to reveal that he is set to unveil the company's New Global Captive Benchmarking Report, which details the use of captives world-wide and the number of captives buying insurance, as part of the debate.

The discussion will look at how, when properly managed, captive reinsurance can enable a more stable pricing environment and access to different capacities to absorb unusual levels of loss, while it will review various alternative structures and give practical examples showing how reinsurance in combination with, or in addition to, traditional programmes can create more flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

"I'll be speaking alongside two clients — one is from the west coast of the US and the other is from Europe," he said.

"The seminar will be about reinsuring your captive and I will really just be talking about the different ways in which captives buy reinsurance and using reinsurance as a means to protect themselves."

Mr. Gemmell reckons Marsh's latest captive report will be big news for risk managers and captive owners alike attending the conference.

"We have had to go to great lengths to get this right," he said. "But because we have had so many captives, we have been able to get this report from across the domiciles and it is the first time it has been done on a global basis."

When he is not busy presenting at RIMS, Mr. Gemmell will be dividing his time between the Marsh booth and cafe and the famous Bermuda booth.

"Marsh has a booth which I will be at, and I will also be at the Bermuda booth when I do not have meetings with clients and prospects," he said. "It is the best place for meeting so many clients and prospects at one time at one meeting and to discuss with them about captives and Bermuda."

And he is most looking forward to the opportunity to get out there and network with Bermuda-based contacts and clients.

"Definitely networking is as valuable as anything," he said. "Last year, three weeks after I joined Marsh I went to RIMS and it was just a great way to meet lots of people from Bermuda that have been good business contacts since then.

"Most of the existing clients are US-based, but there will be other people from elsewhere there as well and we reach out to all our domiciles globally and if I know of any clients attending RIMS I make every effort to meet up with them."

Mr. Gemmell, who originally comes from Glasgow in Scotland and has been working for Marsh almost 10 years now, studied Risk Management at university, before joining the company's graduate training scheme in London in 1999.

He started off as a consultant in strategy and enterprise risk management and then four years ago moved into captive consulting, most recently linking up with the business development team for the captive management group in Bermuda last year.