NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Lloyd’s of London insurance market keeps a close eye on competition from Bermudian reinsurers, but is more focused on the challenge coming from Switzerland, the market’s chief executive said.In an interview at the market’s US headquarters, Richard Ward also said consolidation in the sector was being held back by low valuations, which left potential buyers with little to look forward to if they made a deal.The Lloyd’s market traces its origins back 323 years to a London coffee house where merchants met to insure ships, but today the company is best known for the syndicates that insure large global risks.For years, Lloyd’s has faced increasingly strong Bermudian reinsurers, but Ward said the Bermudians in some cases were not as strong as they appeared.Instead, he said, people look at Zurich as the place to do business, given the country’s favourable business climate and the success of some of the businesses already there. Some London reinsurers with business at Lloyd’s have been moving to set up Swiss units as well.“People are seeing Switzerland now as a safer haven than they ever have before,” said Ward, a chemist by training who spent much of his career in the oil industry and oil markets before joining Lloyd’s in 2006.While the market looks at international competition, insurers within the market are looking at each other, as consolidation talk gets louder.Beazley dropped a bid for Bermuda-based Hardy Underwriting in mid-December, while Brit Insurance accepted a buyout offer from private equity last October.There have been few other deals, but the talk continues.Ward said for publicly held brokers, depressed valuations made a purchase attractive on paper, but carried just as much risk. Major property insurers and reinsurers are generally trading for less than book value.“Yes you can use the excess capital to buy out other brokers, but it doesn’t change the face you are entering the bottom of the cycle,” he said.Most analysts except pricing in the property and casualty insurance and reinsurance markets to be down this year, with little hope of improvement before 2012, absent a major disaster happening before them.Among private brokers, the situation is just as glum, according to Lloyd’s US president Hank Watkins.For the privately held brokers, valuations are depressed, owners looking toward retirement are not able to get what they thought the business was worth and many are “just holding on” for a turn in the market, he said.