Insurance

Regulators might want to take a close look at Bermuda-based insurance management firm Sussex International Ltd. following the collapse by fraud over the last six months of an Antigua-registered insurer and another company based in Nevada.All three were run by Charles Gordon-Seymour, a discredited British businessman and former Bermuda resident whose ventures frequently collapse in suspicious circumstances with debts of millions of dollars.

Concerns about the credibility of some of the people involved are holding up the formation in Bermuda of Resource Underwriters, a new $300 million reinsurer whose front-man is Robin Spencer-Arscott.

Robert Mulderig is chairman and CEO of Mutual Risk Management, one of Bermuda's best-performing alternative risk companies for several years. Here Mulderig discusses the company's business affairs with Inside Bermuda.

Statistical comparison of Caribbean-based offshore financial centers. Figures supplied by Foreign & Commonwealth Office/National Audit Office.

Robin Spencer-Arscott, who lost his position as chairman of Aon Re and Aon Risk Services in Bermuda after Aon's acquisition of Alexander & Alexander, is believed to be close to setting up a new $300-$400 million reinsurer in Bermuda.Details of the new reinsurer have not been announced but Spencer-Arscott has been telling insurance people that he hopes to have the company up and running by the Rendezvous de Septembre gathering in Monte Carlo next month.

The ability of finite risk reinsurer Stockton Re to continue its impressive growth since it was formed three years ago is in question following the resignations last month of chief underwriters Richard Black and Michael Cascio, who effectively ran the insurance side of the company.Their departures followed differences with senior management over the future direction of the firm following the recent sale of its investment manager and sister company, Commodities Corporation, to Goldman Sachs.

Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company, which was stripped of over $40 million of assets two years before it went bust without Bermuda's regulators so much as batting an eyelid, is now estimated by its liquidators to be insolvent by an astonishing $1.4 billion. If the figures are accurate, Bermuda Fire would become not only by far the biggest insolvency in Bermuda's history but also one of the biggest insurance insolvencies anywhere in the world.

Case 554 of 1997 - Captive Resources, Inc. v. United Trades Insurance Company - Writ of Summons - Grand Court of the Cayman Islands - July 4, 1997

Bermuda-based Centre Reinsurance Holdings is facing legal action following the recent provisional liquidation of UK firm Anglo American Insurance Company, which Centre Re both owned and reinsured.Inside Bermuda has been told that creditors are going to sue Centre Re, alleging that Centre Re and its parent, Swiss-based Zurich Insurance Company, have misled Anglo creditors and acted in its own interests to the detriment of creditors through a series of actions since 1992.

Brian O' Hara, chairman and chief executive officer of both excess liability carrier Exel Ltd. and its main operating subsidiary X. L., was by far the best paid officer in 1996 of all the executives of Bermuda-based insurers that are publicly-listed in the United States, according to a salaries survey conducted by Offshore Business News & Research.The review shows that O'Hara took home a financial package worth $5.52 million for fiscal 1996, more than $2 million greater than the next highest-paid officer, Michael Butt, president and CEO of property catastrophe reinsurer Mid Ocean Ltd.

A British television programme claiming that a "mysterious Irishman" called Steven Baker was being sought in connection with the worldwide insurance fraud that goes by the name of Dai Ichi Kyoto Re caused a lot of interest in Bermuda. One of Dai Ichi's sister companies, North American Fidelity & Guarantee, had a brief but extremely profitable and very fraudulent one-year trading spell in Bermuda in 1992/1993. The company began life as a shelf company set up in October, 1989, by ambitious Bermuda lawyer Lynda Milligan-Whyte.

A trial date has finally been set for what will be one of the most eagerly-awaited business-related civil trials in the history of Bermuda.Bermuda Supreme Court has provisionally set aside a date in the spring of 1998 to begin hearing allegations that some of the island's most influential businessmen stripped Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance of assets valued at over $40 million even though they allegedly knew the firm was insolvent.

A scheme of arrangement has been selected as a way to liquidate the assets of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company, which is estimated to have liabilities of $500 million to $700 million. Details of the scheme are expected later this year but the process is expected to last at least 20 years.

One of Bermuda's most influential businessmen, lawyer Charles Collis, has been accused of doctoring the minutes of a crucial committee meeting to hide evidence that directors of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance knew the firm was in financial trouble before they stripped it of $40 million in assets.

Bermuda-based Mutual Risk Management, which sells itself to investors as being risk-free and to its ultimate insureds as being a carrier of risk, is currently subject to an examination by the US Internal Revenue Service.

The Things People Say.

The management of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance may have underestimated the costs of running off the failed insurer's international business by as much as $23 million, according to liquidator Ernst & Young. When breaking up the company in 1991 in order to protect its profitable domestic business from the debts of its international arm, only $1.7 million was left behind to pay Bermuda Fire's run off costs.

Bermuda-based Mutual Risk Management, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has dismissed its auditor of 18 years, KPMG Peat Marwick, and replaced it with Ernst & Young - but will not officially say why.

Norman Rosenthal, a senior securities analyst with Wall Street investment firm Morgan Stanley, heaped praise on the Bermuda insurance and reinsurance market yesterday.Mr. Rosenthal, whom the press had been notified in advance was a hard-hitting talker, didn't have a bad word to say about the island's industry during an address yesterday at a lunch organised by Bermuda Insurance Institute.

Bermuda-based Park International Ltd., the insurance brokerage subsidiary of Mutual Risk Management, has bought rival broker HJF International Ltd. and taken on all six of its staff, including HJF's former owners, Michael Jenkins and Mike Foulger.The acquisition has arguably made Park the "leading independent brokerage firm in Bermuda, if you consider an independent broker to be one not connected with another broker", Park's president, Paul Scope, said.

Law firm Mello Hollis Jones & Martin resigned from the investigation into Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance because of "professional disagreements" with a British law firm also involved in the case, we have been told.Its decision to resign - only a few weeks after MHJ&M partner Saul Froomkin had interviewed Bermuda's Fire's top directors - had nothing to do with concerns about the high profile nature of a case that affects some of the most powerful members of the community, according to sources.

Long-term policyholders with BF&M Ltd. are not at financial risk because of a multi-million dollar lawsuit brought against the firm by the liquidators of its former parent, BF&M's lawyers have claimed. Although BF&M Life Insurance Company Ltd. is named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, long-term policyholders are protected under Bermuda law, said lawyer Timothy Marshall, of Marshall & Company.

BF&M's policyholders appear to have decided to stick it out with their company in the wake of a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the firm.BF&M's main local rivals, Colonial Insurance and Argus Insurance, said they have seen little or no new business as a result of BF&M's legal problems.Last week, the liquidators of Bermuda Fire & Marine brought a lawsuit in an attempt to gain control of BF&M's assets to pay overseas creditors, who are estimated to be owed.in excess of $100 million.

The focus of the court action filed yesterday against BF&M Ltd. and other co-defendants will be the complex sale of Bermuda Fire & Marine's profitable domestic business in 1991. Bermuda Supreme court must decide whether the sale was done fairly and in the best interests of the firm's policyholders and shareholders, as Bermuda Fire's directors claim, or whether it was a way of avoiding expected claims by U.S. policyholders, as creditors claim.

A lawsuit has been filed against some of Bermuda's best-known companies and individuals by the liquidators of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company Ltd. Although no amount has been stated in the legal action filed at Bermuda Supreme Court on Thursday (Oct. 5), the liquidators said earlier this year that Bermuda Fire's debts could exceed $100 million.

Bermuda-based EXEL Ltd. has announced it intends to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, XL Reinsurance Company Ltd., to provide specialty reinsurance coverage for captives, commercial insurance reinsurance companies, with a start-up capital of $250 million. It is expected to be operational by December 1, 1995.In addition, another EXEL subsidiary, XL Insurance Company Ltd., will increase the maximum limits offered to general liability clients to $150 million from $100 million. Individual directors and officers liability insurance limits for "Side A" coverage only are being raised to $50 million from $25 million.

Sphere Drake Holdings Ltd. had $71 million wiped off its market value in the four trading days after the firm announced it was increasing by up to $15 million its reserves on its marine protection and indemnity insurance business.Investors began bailing out of the company immediately after the insurer's surprise announcement on September 27 that the extra reserving would lead to a drop in third-quarter earnings of $12.75 million or 69 cents per share.

Former government tourism officer and failed travel agency boss Francis Purvey has become the first director of a Bermuda company to be adjudged to have carried on running a firm while he knew it to be insolvent.The Supreme Court has made a declaration that Mr. Purvey fraudulently traded as president and director of World Travel Advisors Ltd., a travel agency he set up in 1985 after leaving the Department of Tourism.

Mutual Risk Management has agreed to acquire CFM Insurance Managers, a Bermuda company which provides risk management services to captive insurance firms based on the island. Several CFM clients are subsidiaries of European companies and many are involved in the international marine insurance market, a release announcing the deal stated.

Prospectuses have been sent out in an attempt to raise $30 million through the private placement of preference shares for an innovative new Bermudian catastrophe reinsurer - Palladium Insurance - which intends to securitise insurance products for trading purposes.Palladium Insurance, which has been formed in Bermuda, is being sponsored by Powerscourt Group Ltd., of Bermuda, and The Chicago Corporation, of the United States.

Efforts are being made to raise $100 million for a joint Bermudian/American catastrophe insurer/reinsurer called Palladium Insurance Ltd that intends to securitise insurance products for trading purposes.Palladium Insurance, which has been formed in Bermuda, is being sponsored by Powerscourt Group Ltd., of Bermuda, and The Chicago Corporation, of the United States.

John Goldberg has been replaced as head of J&H Intermediaries, the Bermuda broking unit of insurance firm Johnson & Higgins, and transferred to the firm's offices in New York.His position in Bermuda is being taken by Dick Southworth, who is relocating from J&H's Cleveland office.

Bermuda-based mutual insurer Oil Insurance Ltd. intends to increase its basic per occurrence limit from $200 million to $225 million, the firm has announced.It is one of several initiatives that the firm's president and chief executive officer, Doyle Stephens, said "are intended to make OIL more attractive to a broader market, increase its flexibility and its value to the existing customer base".

The Bermuda Government's proposed compulsory national pensions scheme for the workforce will not necessarily lead to a boom in the business of life assurance companies on the island, according to one local insurance boss.John Sainsbury, head of Argus Insurance, said, initially, many of the plans are likely to be small and the administrative costs for insurers are likely to be high.

Bermuda's reinsurance bosses are being asked to rely less on the past and more on the future in the way they assess catastrophic risks around the world. If they listen, it could help them avoid a hit and lead to big buck savings.By learning more about the science behind hurricanes, tornadoes, hail and flooding, they are hoping to revolutionize the way they do business.

Outspoken American lawyer Eugene Anderson, who represents policyholders in actions against insurance firms, has attacked the ability of Bermuda's new insurance laws to protect clients who have claims against the island's insurers.Mr. Anderson, in his second attack on Bermuda's insurance industry over the last 13 months, said Bermuda's laws failed to protect the rights of policyholders.

The latest round in a long-running battle between reinsurer Belvedere Insurance Company Ltd. and its former vice-president and treasurer, Vanessa Thomas, will be heard in chambers at Bermuda Supreme Court on Monday.

British insurance salesman Andrew Morris, 29, of Manchester, England, has been sentenced to serve four months in prison in Bermuda after pleading guilty to credit fraud. He will be deported once his sentence ends.

Bermuda-based property catastrophe reinsurer Renaissance Re is going ahead with a $50 million initial public offering of its shares, 18 months after canceling an IPO of more than $100 million due to a decline in the world investment climate.Renaissance Re. will offer 2.7 million shares, which represents ten per cent of the company's capital.

Andrew Morris, 29, has been charged with failing to pay an $8,000 bill at Elbow Beach Hotel, where he had been staying for two weeks. He denies the offence.

Bermuda Financial Centre Ltd has suffered a major setback with the announcement that the planned major tenant for the office portion of the $150 million project - Centre Reinsurance - may move to a new site being planned by Pearman Watlington.The latest piece of bad news for BFCL, which hopes to develop the site of the former Bermudiana Hotel, came yesterday when PWs announced it had submitted plans to build a retail/office/residential complex at the company's WaterFront site on Pitts Bay Road.

Bermuda-based Hopewell International Insurance Ltd has been awarded $1 million against North American Fidelity & Guarantee, a reinsurance company that was kicked out of Bermuda by government for failing to prove it had the $100 million of assets the firm claimed it had.

A decision on whether to sue some of Bermuda's most influential local businessmen for millions of dollars, stemming from the collapse of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance, is expected to be made over the next couple of months. At stake is over $100 million owed to creditors of Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance and the credibility of Bermuda's regulatory and legal system in relation to protecting the rights of foreigners doing business with Bermuda-based insurers and reinsurers.

A fourth legal action has been brought against controversial reinsurer North American Fidelity & Guarantee, which moved to Belgium in 1993 after being kicked out of Bermuda by the government.London-based CRM Insurance Services Ltd is suing NAF&G and two related companies, Kobe Reinsurance and Dai Ichi Kyoto Reinsurance Company, for $2.89 million in the High Court of the United Kingdom. The action was filed on February 28.

Reinsurer North American Fidelity & Guarantee - which operated in Bermuda for just over a year before being asked to leave by the island's government - is being sued yet again.Already a defendant in two actions totalling $4.7 million stemming from its short time in Bermuda, a third action for approximately $2.5 million was filed against NAF&G by New York Marine & General Insurance Company at Bermuda Supreme Court on April 7.

Bermuda-based Shoreline Mutual, which issues certificates of financial guarantee for vessels entering US waters, has arranged further reinsurance for all its members to protect them against supplemental cash calls being made in the event of substantial claims.The policy, which has been placed by Willis Faber & Dumas and Sedgwick Marine & Cargo and is underwritten 100 per cent at Lloyd's, is expected to strengthen Shoreline's product in the battle for business with its main rival, First Line, which is also based in Bermuda.

Caliban Holdings Ltd, which owns Belvedere Insurance and other insurance-related entities, has brought a legal action against Belvedere's former vice president and treasurer, Vanessa Thomas, to try to force her to sell her five per cent stake in Caliban back to the company.

Former head of Bermuda National Bank John Grant Marshall is facing more financial anguish stemming from his spell as a director of controversial reinsurer North American Fidelity & Guarantee.NAF&G, which is already being sued for $3.7 million at Bermuda Supreme Court in a claim last year, has had a new $1 million action brought against it by Bermuda-based Hopewell International Insurance Ltd, which is a reinsurance pool for captive insurance firms.

An application to compulsorily wind up Stockholm Re (Bermuda) Ltd was made yesterday - ten months after the company went into run off.The company said that "until very recently" the financial position of Stockholm Re indicated that "the reserves would be sufficient to satisfy known claims".

The Bermuda Government has been asked to set up a hardship fund to compensate 1,600 local victims of failed insurer United Security Life Insurance Company.The call has come from 78-year-old stroke victim Burlington Williams, who believes government negligence contributed to the company's collapse.