Bermuda is well-positioned as a laboratory for innovative solutions in risk transfer, insurance brokers in the Western United States were told this week.

The brokers, attending a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, were surprised at the wide range of insurance and reinsurance products available in the local market.

They were briefed by senior vice president of ACE Insurance Co. Ltd. Roger Gillett, who is also chairman of the marketing committee of government's Insurance Advisory Committee (IAC).

Mr. Gillett gave an address during the 30th Western States Surplus Lines Conference underscoring how Bermuda had emerged as a true market, considering the wide range of product offerings and the diversity of capital sources.

The marketplace here includes captives, property catastrophe reinsurers, finite risk insurers and reinsurers, as well as mono-line and multi-line direct writers.

And Mr. Gillett told The Royal Gazette yesterday, "There was a time when we claimed that we had innovation in Bermuda, but that innovation was being developed elsewhere and implemented in Bermuda, because the Island was accommodating from a regulatory standpoint.

"But now that innovation truly exists in Bermuda. The talent that has been attracted over the last two years has enabled us to be truly innovative.'' During his address, Mr. Gillett quoted from a recent Standard & Poor's Bermuda market Report which stated: "Over the last 30 years, Bermuda has become the breeding ground for the most innovative and unusual risk management techniques in the insurance industry.

"For every step that Bermuda takes in the development of its insurance capabilities, the US and of late the European commercial insurance market, takes a similar step in the development of creative risk financing techniques.

"Over these 30 years, Bermuda has gone from periods of calm, as well as periods of significant turmoil. But through it all, it has been able to continually react to the changing values and needs of its customers, and has emerged as perhaps the world's leading market on the cutting edge of insurance risk financing and risk management techniques.

"And over the last two years, Bermuda has led in the development of a new form of corporate organisation with a holding company located in Bermuda, along with numerous operating subsidiaries throughout the world.'' There has been considerable growth in recent years in the types of business written by captives and true diversification and globalisation through acquisition by commercial insurers.

The brokers were surprised by the size of the limits available here and the fact that Bermuda's excess liability carriers had diversified so substantially.

Bermuda was featured for the first time this year at the annual conference that attracts in the main, direct brokers and companies from Arizona, California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah and Washington State.

Mr. Gillett said yesterday, "It is not a market where Bermuda is particularly well known, and I felt quite a bit of interest in our marketplace. When people learn of Bermuda's capital and surplus and premium volume, they tend to stand up and listen.'' Roger Gillet