Senior corporate leaders praise Bermuda’s world-class talent, innovation, respected regulation, and ease of doing global business from the island in a new testimonial campaign video released by Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) today.

Brian Duperreault, newly-appointed AIG chief executive officer and former CEO and chairman of Hamilton Insurance Group, is among several top industry executives interviewed for the 2½-minute video, applauding the jurisdiction’s strengths as a global financial centre. The project, shot by Bermuda’s Burnt House Productions, is part of an ongoing public-relations campaign rolled out by BDA with advocacy partners in the US this year to raise the domicile’s profile, particularly among North American business executives.

“We’re proud that leaders from Bermuda’s international business sector have joined us in this campaign to promote the jurisdiction,” said BDA CEO Ross Webber. “Theirs is an important message that will spearhead our wider campaign over the next several months. It represents an opportunity to raise awareness about Bermuda’s unique, elite marketplace and differentiate the island from other finance centres.”

Key executives featured in the video describe what they feel are the Bermuda market’s core strengths and why their companies chose the island as a base from which to conduct global business. Among the attributes they cite as Bermuda’s strongest selling points are the quality of the island’s workforce, its efficient regulatory system, its ideal location and the market’s agile, collaborative, innovative spirit.

“The Bermuda marketplace is world-class. It’s world-class in the people. It’s world-class in the capital that it has. It’s world-class in its regulatory environment. And it’s a world-class environment just generally,” says Mr Duperreault. “The way liability is covered in the United States had its genesis here. The way natural catastrophes are covered globally had its genesis here. The way capital gets deployed in our business has been evolving, and that evolution had its genesis here. So that’s innovation.”

Mr Duperreault joined five other executives to deliver positive testimonials in the video, including Stuart Lacey, founder and CEO of Trunomi; Angelos Stergiou, CEO and vice-chairman, Sellas Life Sciences Group; Patrick Tannock, CEO, XL Bermuda Ltd, Insurance; Allison Towlson, senior vice-president, distribution and operations, Chubb Bermuda; and Stephen Weinstein, senior vice-president and group general counsel of RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd.

“We have an enabling environment for the free flow of financial capital, and also high-quality intellectual capital; the prospects for innovation are extremely bright in Bermuda,” said Mr Tannock. “We’re able to get our products to market extremely quickly; we do not have to file in 52 different states and that is extremely critical in terms of the speed with which we can provide solutions.”

Chubb’s Ms Towlson highlighted the Bermuda market’s maturity and sophistication. “I think it’s really important that Bermuda has that infrastructure that allows companies to be innovative to grow and to really meet their business needs,” she said.

Dr Stergiou, whose company is developing drug therapies in conjunction with New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, established an office on Bermudiana Road last fall after relocating from Switzerland.

“When we decided to move to Bermuda, it was truly due to the fact that the proximity to the US was very important to us,” Dr Stergiou noted. “We want to encourage more companies from the US and Europe to come to Bermuda. It’s very important to have staff and a workforce in place that’s highly educated.”

Trunomi’s Mr Lacey agreed: “There’s a very strong and diverse population that allows us to access legal talent, regulatory, banking, financial [talent], all of which are very important for a company like ours.”

Mr Weinstein, who is also a BDA board member, added: “Bermuda’s one of a handful of global financial centres for reinsurance and the only place in the world that high-school kids know that actuary is a rock-star job. It’s the perfect place to find and retain talent for our space.”

“The voices of our own industry leaders are the most compelling testament we could have to advocate for Bermuda’s advantages,” said Rosemary Jones, BDA head of communications and marketing. “They are influential personalities from big-name corporations with first-hand experience of the market. Who better to fly the flag for our jurisdiction?”

Ms Jones said the project is part of a strategic campaign to carry the Bermuda message to a target audience, supporting the agency’s business-development and advocacy mission. The video is housed on a digital platform (or content hub) produced and co-branded by Bloomberg BNA to amplify its reach to c-suite executives in North America. It is also posted on BDA’s YouTube channel and website. The campaign will include digital advertising and e-mail and social-media marketing, targeting executives across relevant industry sectors.

The video’s launch follows BDA’s live media event co-hosted at Bloomberg headquarters in New York City earlier this month. The forum convened senior US business leaders for in-depth panel discussions on issues important to the Bermuda market.

The video can be seen at http://www.investinginbermuda.com/