Insurance Day Summit Bermuda 2010

This year's Insurance Day Summit Bermuda saw more than 40 chief executives come together to discuss the important challenges facing the sector in front of a live audience.

The competitiveness of Bermuda, and the regulatory challenges it faces from the US, in the form of the Neal bill, and Europe, in the form of the incoming Solvency II regime were high on the agenda as delegates were treated to keynote speeches from such industry luminaries as the chief executive of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), Dr David Sampson; XL Capital chief executive Mike McGavick; Marsh & McLennan Companies chief executive, Brian Duperreault; chief executive of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Dr Terri Vaughan; and the chief executive of the island's regulator, the Bermuda Monetary Authority's Jeremy Cox.

For the second year in succession the Summit was opened by the Premier of Bermuda, Dr Ewart Brown, He said the level of communication between the Bermudian government and the island's insurers and reinsurers was now at "an all-time high".

Enactment of the Neal bill, which would create a new tax on reinsurance transactions between a US subsidiary insurance company and its non-US affiliate company, would be "self-destructive" for US consumers and discriminated unfairly against foreign corporations "legitimately" competing in the US market, Dr Brown added. He said that he had recently led a delegation to Washington DC to argue Bermuda's case that such a tax would actually increase US consumers' insurance bills.