Benfield Sets Up Bermuda Office
By Lisa S. Howard
International Editor
Benfield Group recently set up an office in Bermuda to take advantage of growing business opportunities there.
"A lot of our customers place reinsurance here and we just felt it was important to give our customers that sort of extra access to the market by having some people here to help them with that," said John Jenks, team leader for the Benfield Bermuda office.
He said Benfield aims to provide extra help or negotiation for new products or particularly tough placements.
Another reason for having a local presence is that "we are very big in the retro area," Mr. Jenks said.
"Its one of our specialties, and we believe that by being here, it will help us enhance producing more retrocessional customers on the island, i.e., actual customers here buying retrocessional reinsurance for themselves" either off island or on the island, he said.
Mr. Jenks said Benfield also has a specialty business that handles large international and U.S. property risks for Fortune 2000-sized companies. "Were offering ourselves as an independent broker to U.S.-domiciled retailers to place shares of that business into the Bermuda market," he said.
"They need to come to a local Bermuda registered broker to do so, which we can offer them," he said. "And because were entirely independent and we have no retail operations in the United States, were not a threat to them," he said.
Benfield has tried to bring a pocket of expertise into the local office, which reflects what the company has around the world, he continued. "We have someone from our ReMetrics area, which is the actuarial, analytical area of the company," he said. "Weve also got someone from our United States operations, Benfield Blanch."
In addition, he noted his own experience is in the international and U.S. treaty markets.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 17, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.