A new financial guaranty reinsurer coming to Bermuda has already retained an on-Island recruitment agency ? which specialises in placing reinsurance and insurance staff ? to help them get the staff they need to get up and running quickly.

Ascend Financial Services Ltd., Ascend Guaranty Ltd. and Ascend Insurance Group Ltd. all incorporated on the Island early last month.

Though they are currently waiting on their licence application to be approved by insurance regulators at the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the group has already retained the services of a recently formed local firm, www.bermudaREcruit.com, to help them ramp up staffing at the operation.

This was revealed by James Partnership managing director Britt Reiss, who spoke with as she unveiled her company's latest development.

She said there has been such a demand for re/insurance hires that the James Partnership decided to set up a specialist subsidiary ? www.bermudaREcruit.com ? to deal solely with this sector.

She confirmed that www.bermudaREcruit.com was acting exclusively on behalf of Ascend, but said she was barred for confidentiality reasons from speaking to how many staff the new financial guaranty reinsurer might be looking to hire.

A Willis report this week said that Ascend's plans included "15 staff due to move to the Island".

In the end, Ascend's presence is likely to be bigger than just those 15 employees though, with Mrs. Reiss saying the new reinsurer is looking to make hires within the local market.

Mrs. Reiss added that the James Partnership and www.bermudaREcruit.com have also done business with some hedge funds who are now looking at writing conventional reinsurance.

The Willis report said this was an increasing trend with hedge funds doing this though through fronting companies or by consolidating indemnity through trust funds. Compared to the mid to late 1990s ? when there was a real lull in insurance company hires according to Mrs. Reiss ? the demand for risk management professionals to fill vacancies at Bermuda-based re/insurers has not let up since a wave of companies set up on the Island after the void in capacity following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Mrs. Reiss said companies working from these shores were keen to find staff that can "hit the ground running".

Although conceding there are times when qualified staff can only be found overseas, she said Bermuda's insurers ideally wanted to hire staff already based on the Island. This could be Bermudians, or if none are qualified, expatriates already living in Bermuda. She added that the James Partnership had had good luck with placing qualified Bermudians ? even to recruiting them home from jobs in rival insurance markets, London and New York.

Mrs. Reiss said the James Partnership ? which has reportedly been active on the Island for about 30 years, initially through affiliation with a UK recruitment firm, then officially incorporating under its current name in 1991 ? was in effect the parent company of the new venture, www.bermudaREcruit.com.

Under the new structure, the James Partnership will handle hires for all areas outside of re/insurance ? for example, with hedge funds, banks and accounting firms ? while www.bermudaREcruit will specialise in placing risk management professionals.

For the moment, www.bermudaREcruit placements will be handled by three from the James Partnership including Mrs. Reiss, associate director Louisa Freisenbruch and Monique White.

Mrs. Reiss said she typically handles the senior placements while her colleague Mrs. Freisenbruch works with filling junior to mid-level entry positions.