Bermuda-based Starr Excess Liability Insurance Co., Ltd., has changed its focus in its London office to allow for more marketing flexibility.

Starr senior vice president, Clinton N. Greene, said the change from a representative office to a service company took effect July 1.

He said, "We wanted to be able to do some things that a representative office was not permitted to do, things that would enable us to better explain to those in the London market, what Starr Excess is all about. It does not involve any underwriting from London or operating as an insurer.

"But we can better promote Starr Excess in the market.'' Starr will get some annual promotion this September, as the sole sponsor for the Liability Underwriters' Group (LUG) conference at Exeter College in Oxford, England.

The key subject under discussion by some 200 delegates is the impact of a changing world on liability insurance. The liability market involves hundreds of millions of pounds in premiums.

Participants will include underwriters, brokers, lawyers and risk managers. In fact for risk managers, it will be a unique opportunity to network with the underwriting community.

Starr Excess has sponsored the LUG conference for three consecutive years, and former Lloyd's underwriter Graham Nankivell, who is now Starr's London representative, has been LUG chairman since 1992.

Mr. Nankivell said, "Being an underwriter in today's world is a compromise.

You have to be an engineer, a lawyer, a businessman, a communicator, a technical insurance man, a scientist, a chemist, a pharmacist, the whole lot.

None of us can actually aspire to be all of those things. But every opportunity we have to just improve our knowledge in any area must be grasped.

And there are too few opportunities to do so in this pressured daily activity of ours.'' He said Starr Excess supports the aims behind the LUG, an educational group founded 15 years ago by a number of leading underwriters in the London market with a view to sharing, and raising the standard of their knowledge.

The belief is that by making more knowledge available in what was almost completely a subscription market, the standards of underwriting would rise across the board.

Starr Excess changes focus More than 40 insurance companies and Lloyd's syndicates are now LUG members, with every significant liability insurer in London represented. London market participants are brought together by a mutual interest in continuing professional education.

Topics for discussion at the conference include an exploration of the science of effective risk management and real insights into a US market that London has spent little time examining.

Mr. Nankivell said, "Starr, ACE, and XL write US business for their daily bread and butter, but for many insurers around the world, the US is still something of a closed book.

"Yet, it is an unfortunate fact that in legal developments, where the US leads, so the rest of the world eventually tends to follow. So, from an underwriter's point of view, the more insight, appreciation and understanding we have of what the latest legal thinking is in the US, the more we are able to position our own businesses accordingly.'' The conference will also provide an opportunity for a discussion about alternative risk financing.