Bermuda insurance leaders will be weighing up Dubai's potential as an alternative business location, as well as a source of business opportunities, when they converge on the Middle Eastern city for the World Insurance Forum (WIF) next week.

That is the view of Robin Spencer-Arscott, chairman of the WIF operating committee, who will join more than 300 delegates for the Bermuda-organised event that is being held away from the Island for the first time in its 14-year history.

The increasing difficulties and expense of doing business in Bermuda are making international businesses based on the Island consider their options, he said, with work permit time limits and imminent workplace equity legislation high on their list of concerns.

"People are exploring Dubai, because they are very welcoming over there — to expats and everyone else," Mr. Spencer-Arscott said.

"They are falling over themselves to get people to come to Dubai. Their oil reserves will run out, maybe in 10 years or so, and they want to build their international business and tourism industry."

Under Government's proposed workplace equity laws, companies will be forced to set up policies to ensure Bermuda's largest racial group gets a representative share of the top jobs and those who refuse could be hit with $50,000 fines.

Industry veteran Mr. Spencer-Arscott, a Bermudian, said such legislation would make companies think twice about basing their operations here.

"If you have underwriters writing $100 million of premiums, then they have to be qualified people," Mr. Spencer-Arscott said. "Nobody wants to be told who to hire.

"If Bermudians go out and get a good education, get their qualifications and work hard, then companies would rather hire them than recruiting people from overseas." Education was the key to ensuring that Bermudians were better represented in the international business sector, he added.

Mr. Spencer-Arscott has a track record of hiring Bermudians and encouraging them to get involved in the insurance industry. When he was running the insurance brokerage Frank B. Hall (Bermuda) Ltd. in the late 1980s, he said 80 percent of his staff was Bermudian.

"I prided myself on having four Bermudians out of six people in top management," Mr. Spencer-Arscott said. "Three of them were women and two were black."

Work permit time limits are also causing concern in international business circles, as they are seen as making recruitment more difficult and being disruptive to teams doing highly specialised work.

Mr. Spencer-Arscott, who is deputy chairman of AAA Risk Solutions and CEO of CyrusRe II, said: "In passing, people are telling me that they are expanding their back operations elsewhere. That will hurt Bermudians because they will lose job opportunities.

"These people have companies worth billions of dollars to run and shareholders to appease and if Government does not renew work permits of its employees — even when there is no one qualified to replace them — then they are going to think about going elsewhere.

"I love Bermuda, it's my home, and I don't want to live anywhere else. But I hate to see things like this happening here."

Around 60 delegates from Bermuda will travel to Dubai, of the 300-plus total attending WIF, Mr. Spencer-Arscott said. He admitted that organisers had been concerned about numbers attending, until a late rush of registrations allowed WIF to reach its target figure.

Fewer delegates were coming from the US than when the event was at its traditional Fairmont Southampton venue, he added, with distance and regional safety concerns their primary reasons. But a surge of delegates coming from China, Japan and India had helped to boost attendance.