Two Bermuda banks were among the exhibitors at the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Conference in Orlando - both there with the aim of drumming up some extra business from captive insurance companies.

Butterfield Bank and HSBC, which owns the Bank of Bermuda, each had booths in the Orange County Convention Center.

Bank of Bermuda took its efforts a step further by hosting a roundtable discussion on the industry, combined with a social event, at the swish Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club on the Sunday before the RIMS Conference started.

Among those who attended were Finance Minister Paula Cox, Finance Secretary Donald Scott and Bermuda Monetary Authority director of insurance Shelby Weldon, as well as lawyers, accountants and captive managers.

Bank of Bermuda head of banking Ashley Parker said the bank had formed a dedicated captive team a year ago to focus on better meeting the needs of a huge industry on the Island.

Corporations form captives, as partially or wholly owned subsidiaries, to provide a form of self-insurance.

Bermuda, which boasts more than 800 active captives, has long been the world's leading captive domicile.

The Bank of Bermuda has been providing banking services to captives since the 1960s, but Mr. Parker said the captive team was now focused on tapping into HSBC's broad international presence to offer a more holistic service.

He added that there was great scope to get more involved with the captives and their sizeable asset base.

"At the end of 2007, Bermuda captives had something like $88 billion in assets," Mr. Parker said. "Of that $88 billion, between ourselves and Butterfield, our main competitor, we'd be lucky if we had 10 percent of it. So there are great opportunities on the asset management side.

"HSBC is one of the world's largest and strongest financial services organisations. Bank of Bermuda is working more closely with the HSBC Group and increasing our connectivity with other jurisdictions."

Mr. Parker said the captives were multiple-jurisdiction operations and they needed banking services that would be effectively seamless across borders.

"We want to offer them similar services using similar systems everywhere, to give them better ability to run their captives across jurisdictions," Mr. Parker added.

HSBC Insurance Management, the bank's global captive HSBC Insurance Management, the bank's global captive management operation, is led from Bermuda by its recently appointed new CEO Roy Fellowes.

Like HSBC, Butterfield has a presence in captive jurisdictions outside Bermuda, including the Cayman Islands, Barbados and Guernsey.

Butterfield's Rick Manuel, vice-president, relationship management and sales of corporate banking, said his five-strong team had enjoyed a productive RIMS Conference.

"The numbers have certainly been down, but the quality of traffic we've seen has been pretty good," Mr. Manuel said.

"It's been a good opportunity for us to network with a lot of captive managers and we have some leads to follow up when we get back home."

Mr. Manuel had been expecting to field a few questions about Butterfield's $200 million capital raise through preferred shares guaranteed by the Bermuda Government.

Surprisingly, he said, there had not been any such queries.

"I think that people have had a chance to digest the information and it's been well received," Mr. Manuel said.