LONDON (Bloomberg) — Hiscox Ltd. is to close a Bermuda-based insurance and reinsurance team it established three months ago and the executive in charge will leave the company.

Bob Forness, 43, who joined Hiscox as head of speciality reinsurance on September 1, will depart along with six other employees, spokeswoman Kylie O'Connor said. The unit specialised in insuring companies against legal claims from workers. The company's other operations in Bermuda, a British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean, are unaffected.

Hiscox, the third-largest underwriter at Lloyd's of London, plans to open five new offices in the US, in cities including Boston, Kansas City, Miami and Los Angeles by the end of next year it said in a statement.

"The insurance world has changed massively since August and we decided to focus on areas we are already active in because it's more familiar to us," chief executive Officer Bronek Masojada said in a telephone interview. "Prices are going up. We're more likely to see this in America" than in the UK.

"This will not have any material impact on Hiscox International's 2009 business plan," the insurer said in the statement.

Lloyd's of London insurers are looking to pick up customers from American Insurance Group Inc. after the US's biggest insurance company was forced to accept an $85 billion government bailout. Stock market declines have eroded some primary insurers' capital, restricting their appetite for risk and fueling demand for reinsurance.