Many would say Bermuda would not be the insurance marketit has become without Brian Duperreault’s vision to realize itspotential and spearhead its transformation into one of the world’sleading insurance centers.

And they’d be right, even if Duperreault himself ischaracteristically humble when that assertion is made to him.

“I’m just one in a number of people who recognized the uniquevalue the Bermuda insurance market had, and I did my part to moveit along,” he says.

But his Insurance Hall of Fame Laureate profile (he was inductedin 2011) underscores his true contribution to the island’s status:“During his 10 years as CEO of Ace, [Duperreault was] instrumentalin transforming Bermuda from an island nation with a small,reinsurance-focused market into a global insurance center.”

Duperreault “re-entered” the Bermuda market in 1994—just at thetime when Bermuda was seeing a huge influx of reinsurance capitalfollowing Hurricane Andrew—when he became chairman, president andCEO of Ace Insurance.

Why re-entered? Duperreault was born in Bermuda, a fact he sayshe deliberately kept to himself at first while being considered forAce’s top executive position.

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After more than 20 years at American International Group (AIG),where he held numerous positions before being named executive vicepresident of AIG Foreign General Insurance and chairman/CEO ofAIG’s American International Underwriters (AIU), he wanted to earnthe Ace position on his own merits.

“I didn’t want the board to know I was a native; I didn’t wantto get the job based on that,” he reveals. “I told them I was ‘bornto do the job,’ and they asked me, ‘What does that mean?’ and[eventually] I told them.”

The task was to transform Ace, which at that time was a Bermudaspecialty carrier, into a global insurance organization.

That goal was achieved as Ace expanded aggressively underDuperreault’s watch, acquiring Bermuda-based property-catastrophereinsurance companies Tempest Re in 1996 and CAT Limited in1998.

But the most notable deal Duperreault executed was takingcontrol of Cigna P&C in 1999, a game-changing move that he says“changed the company forever.”

The Cigna acquisition played a pivotal role in growing Ace froman operation of about 50 employees (“I was 55th,” Duperreaultrecalls) into a Top 20 underwriter with more than 16,000 peopleworking in 53 countries today.

In addition to changing the company, the Cigna deal “wastransformative for me personally; I learned so much during thatprocess,” he says.

“One thing I learned was the power of communication, the powerof being forthright, being straight. As soon as we closed the deal,we went around the country to the cities Cigna was in and said,‘We’re going to have to downsize.’ I told them what I liked anddidn’t like about the company—that not everything’s perfect, thingshave to change. What surprised me was the [positive] reception Ireceived.

“That was a big eye-opener for me,” he says. “People just wantto know the truth. A lot of the people working [in an organization]see the problems; they see it clearer than management does. Theyjust want someone to fix it.

“There’s an old cliché that anything is possible, and before[the Cigna deal] I would have been skeptical of that,” he adds.“But I learned that if you have the motivation and support, don’tset your sights low. Set them as high as you possibly can.”

Duperreault’s role in growing Ace into a major internationalplayer, and the credit he can take for establishing Bermuda as akey cog in the global insurance machine, would have been enough toearn him legendary status.

But in 2008, Duperreault was asked to come out of his briefretirement (he had served as Ace’s CEO until 2004 and remained onas chairman until 2007) to head up global brokerage giant Marsh& McClennan Cos. (#231 on the Fortune 500) as its president andCEO, a position he still holds—and one he describes as “a calling”to which he couldn’t say no.

In 2008, Marsh was still dealing with morale and reputationalissues following the investigation into contingent commissions ledby then-N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer—and the massive finesand leadership shake-up that resulted. To right the ship, the firmwanted at the helm someone with both extraordinary industryexperience and unquestioned integrity.

Duperreault was the perfect choice.

“I was happily retired—I really was,” he recalls. “I wasn’tlooking for work, frankly. I’d obviously known [Marsh] as long asI’d been in the business, and I’d always had enormous respect forit and its people. It was a company I wanted to help get back towhere it belonged in the first place, so it was an easydecision.”

“The versatility of Brian’s strengths as an executive are hardto overstate,” says Cliff Gallant, managing director at Keefe,Bruyette and Woods, who referred to Duperreault as “a great pick”and “highly respected” when Marsh announced the appointment.

“At Ace, he had fantastic vision and was able to take a startupBermudian, something which is quite commonplace, and through somedaring and boldness he created what is now one of the world’s mostrespected insurance franchises,” Gallant adds. “Then, he was ableto take the lead of a very different type of business, a broker andconsultant, and revitalize MMC from a dark period of desperation toagain be the world’s blue-chip risk-management leader.”

Insurance remains “a fascinating business,” says Duperreault.“You wouldn’t have an economy without an insurance business. It’snice to go to work and do something important.

“It requires what they used to call Renaissance Men—people whoknow a variety of subjects,” he says. “You have to be quantitative.You have to be curious. You have to be aware how information isused, from retrieval to modeling. You have to be able to take arisk, say yes and live with it for a long time. You have to have alove for dealing with people—and be able to know who’s telling thetruth and who isn’t.”