A top insurance executive and banker who served as an independent senator was part of the negotiating team for Bermuda’s landmark tax treaty with the United States that elevated the island to a world-known business jurisdiction.

Joseph “Joe” Johnson was also a president of the insurance and reinsurance giant American International Ltd, a chairman of the Bank of Bermuda, a president of the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce and chairman of its international companies division, and the longest-serving employee of Starr Insurance — celebrating 70 years with the firm this year.

Sir John Swan, a former premier who steered the signature 1985 treaty through with the Reagan Administration, recalled Mr Johnson’s role in the painstaking negotiations with Washington that set the stage for the island’s subsequent economic prosperity.

“Bermuda was far better off as a result of him being involved,” Sir John said. “Joe did a very good job representing Bermuda.

“Joe was running American International when I was premier and very much involved in discussions on the tax treaty from the very beginning.”

He added: “There were naysayers and people having doubts that it would happen, but common sense prevailed.

“Once we agreed on a course of action, everybody did their thing. That treaty was the type of thing that you never dream would produce such significant results.”

Sir John said that Mr Johnson, who was appointed to the Senate in 1988 and served until 1993, had “a broad reach of support regardless of politics, for the ideas and ideals that would make a better Bermuda”.

Gigi Johnson, his widow, called him her “soulmate, my everything”.

“God put us together for a reason,” she said. “Joe thought he was the lucky one, but I knew I was blessed with his goodness and never-wavering love, support, strength, kindness and his big heart that believed in me.”

Mrs Johnson said her husband shared his wealth in “countless ways that changed people’s lives for ever”, including “the young people he sent to college, even strangers he never met — God blessed him, and Joe blessed others”.

Steve Blakey, the chairman of global insurance at Starr, said Mr Johnson was his first boss when he came to Bermuda in the 1980s.

“Joe was professional, a very considered and thoughtful man with a passion for golf and a great sense of humour,” Mr Blakey said.

“Joe was a great guy to be around — to have dinner with, play golf with, do business with. He had it all.

“He was a good leader, someone you felt confident sharing a problem with, that he would have the way forward.

“He never panicked. That’s why he had so many roles.”

The company called him “an insurance pioneer in Bermuda, helping to establish the country as a global commercial centre”.

Mr Johnson served as president and director of Starr International Company Inc, and more recently was director of the Bermudian-based Starr Insurance & Reinsurance Ltd.

Born to Richard and Edna Johnson, he was one of three children. Mr Johnson attended the Port Royal School followed by Saltus Grammar School.

In a 2005 interview, he told The Royal Gazette: “My grandfather was a farmer, and I lived on the family farm in Southampton.

“There are great life lessons to be learnt if you live around a farm. You quickly learn responsibility.”

He added: “Until I was 9, my entire life was within a one-mile stretch. That was all I knew, but then I won a scholarship to Saltus. That was a new world opening up.

“Somewhere along the way I realised that farming was not for me. That truly was the reason I went and got a job, to get out of that. It wasn’t a life that I thought I could do.”

In 1954, he earned a general accounting certificate from the Bermuda Commercial School.

His life changed when he spotted a newspaper advertisement for an accounting trainee at American International, still a young company.

Mr Johnson recalled: “At 17 years old, this was just a job to get a salary. I wasn’t really thinking about a career in insurance.”

He steadily rose through the ranks, becoming president of American International Company in 1976, and president and chief executive in 1978, a position he held for 26 years.

He became chairman at the beginning of 2005, holding the senior AIG position until the year’s end, when he retired.

Mr Johnson was a past chairman and former director at IPC Holdings Ltd, and a past chairman and former director of IPCRe Limited.

He had a formidable list of accomplishments in Bermuda, being sworn in as a Justice of the Peace in 1987 and named honorary fellow of Bermuda College in 1996.

In 2005, Mr Johnson was awarded the Bermuda Insurance Institute’s 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award.

He served twice on the Bermuda Board of Immigration, from 1983 to 1988 and from 1998 to 2003, was a member of the Bermuda Immigration Advisory Committee from 1998 to 2003, and served on the Bermuda Insurance Advisory Committee from 1980 to 2001, holding the position of deputy chairman from 1986 to 1988.

He was on the board of governors of the Bermuda Employers Council from 1982 to 1993, and chairman of the Bermuda Insurance Admissions Committee from 1983 to 1988.

He served on the Bases Utilisation Committee in 1992 and 1993, when he helped to chart the future for the significant acreage of military bases being returned to the island.

Mr Johnson was director and chairman of the Bank of Bermuda Foundation, chairman of the Bank of Bermuda Foundation Endowment, and he served as an officer and director of many international companies incorporated in Bermuda.

He was widowed by his wife of 44 years, Caroll. He and his wife, Gigi, were in their eighteenth year of marriage, dividing their time between Bermuda and Florida.

• Joseph Charles Henry Johnson, an insurance pioneer, banker and former senator, was born on September 27, 1937. He died on November 22, 2024, aged 87, in Naples, Florida