The latest investigation by New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, into insurance brokers and their relationships with carriers is politically motivated and will not get very far, according to leading industry experts.

Speaking this week at an insurance conference held in Bermuda, PLUS (Professional Liability Underwriting Society), The Bermuda Perspective, four leading Bermuda insurance chief executive officers dismissed the recently launched investigation and one said it would ?blow over?.

?It is politically motivated,? said Brian O?Hara, chief executive officer of XL Capital. ?It is Spitzer keeping his name out there.?

Mr. Spitzer?s investigations of the mutual fund and stock research businesses have led to industry-wide reforms, and his office is now probing the fees earned by insurance brokerages.

Mr. Spitzer is looking into whether there is a conflict of interest because commercial insurance brokers receive payments from insurance companies to promote their coverage.

At the same time, the brokers are being paid by their customers, which include the largest corporations in the United States, for their unbiased advice.

According to the New York Times, the California insurance commissioner, John Garamendi, has announced that he is also investigating such payments.

So far four insurance brokers that have been issued subpoenas ? Marsh Inc., Willis Group Holdings, Aon and a smaller company, Kaye Insurance Associates in New York.

And at the PLUS conference, Donald Bailey, moderator of a panel of chief executive officers and executive vice president of the subpoenaed Willis Group, asked the panel what they thought of the issues surrounding broker/carrier relationships ? without mentioning Spitzer by name.

Ralph Jones, president and chief executive officer of Arch Insurance Group, asked what industry did not charge for shelf space. He pointed to Wall Mart and Safeway, stating that you did not know what percentage of what you paid for goods was due to a floor plan decision that had been worked out between the chain and the suppliers.

?I am surprised that the major carriers have not defended this view,? he told about 250 delegates at the Hamilton Princess.

Paul Scope, chief executive officer of The Park Group, the only brokerage on the panel, said: ?It is politically motivated.? But he admitted that transparency was an issue.

But he defended his industry saying it was a long-established practice. He said: ?As long as everything is transparent, it will all blow over.?

Mr. O?Hara said that it was mostly a distributors issue and mocked those who Spitzer was coming out to defend by the action.

?He is suggesting that some large insurance broker might be bullying some defenceless clients like IBM or GM (General Motors),? said Mr. O?Hara.

He added that the outcome of the investigation at most would produce a fine slapped on and or more disclosure processes for brokers.

In the recent investigation into mutual funds stock research business, Spitzer said he expected to see more settlements, and perhaps more litigation, related to his probe of improper trading practices in the nation?s $7 trillion mutual fund industry ? an investigation that he said has already returned more than $2 billion to investors.

The probe centred on a practice known as market timing the rapid-fire buying and selling of mutual fund shares to take advantage of pricing inefficiencies and late trading or trading after market hours.

While late trading is illegal, market timing is not. But mutual fund firms discourage the practice because it tends to sap long-term returns for investors. .