regulations in the wrong class. Insurers who applied under one category in many cases had to be moved to another.

Regulators had to spend considerable time reviewing an estimated 150 to 200 imperfect applications, slowing down processing time.

And Registrar of Companies, Mr. Kymn Astwood, has conceded that the new regulations themselves may have promoted some of the confusion.

Mr. Astwood said, "Some companies were just not clear as to how their company was classified under the new law. There is a lot of judgment involved in the process. It's far from clear. The ultimate judgment is that of the Minister.

"It involved companies that would apply to be registered in class one or two, but which should be in a higher class. The issue surrounds the writing of unrelated business.

"Captives are typically class one insurers, but there were some which wrote some third party business, and they had a portfolio of reserves that they were running off.

"There were a lot of companies we found that were in that situation, that still applied for a class one licence, even though they have this run-off book of third business.

"But we had decided to keep the class one free of the captives with third party business, by placing all of them in class two.'' But there was some confusion among domestic insurers, as well.

Mr. Astwood said, "There were some local companies that were a bit confused.

There was some misunderstanding as to whether certain of the local companies needed to be re-registered, and we had to have a call around and they were all reminded.'' Mr. Astwood was pleased to report that registration of all 1,300 insurers under the new regulations should be completed by the end of the year.

There was an administrative deadline established for September so that there would be no deluge of applications at the end of the year, before the December 31 final deadline.

Said Mr. Astwood, "We should have all of the applications now. The Minister (Minister of Finance Grant Gibbons) will have signed off on every application before the new year.'' In a one-off exercise, insurers have re-registered as required under the 1995 insurance regulations that came into effect on April 29. The only companies that have not registered are those that are expected to enter liquidation.

Mr. Astwood said, "There are some that are experiencing problems. We have a small portfolio of what we call problem companies that we are dealing with. A lot of those didn't re-apply.

"They are delinquent companies that are not in compliance with the law. But I am pleased because it is just a small number that didn't bother to reply. A very small number.

"Over the years we have been focussing on this area and we have substantially reduced the number of companies that are considered to be problems. We have done a lot of cleaning up over the last couple of years, so the number is as small as its been for many years.

"We have a procedure of bringing people in and get from them a plan of corrective action.''