Interest is growing in bringing business to the Island from overseas judging by the comments of hundreds of attendees at Business Bermuda’s Annual Bermuda Financial Services Conference conference in New York.That is the view of Business Bermuda chief executive officer Cheryl Packwood, who said the Island’s message was getting through after several years of staging the event in the Big Apple.“We spoke with a company that is in the process of setting up a Class 3 insurer in Bermuda,” Ms Packwood told The Royal Gazette yesterday. “We also spoke with several investors who want to bring their investment funds to Bermuda. Interest has increased significantly.”More than 300 people signed up for the event, many of them the kind of decision makers that Business Bermuda is trying to reach, Ms Packwood said.Familiarity with what Bermuda offered as an offshore financial centre, in particular in high quality regulation and business infrastructure, was improving she added, thanks to a sustained marketing effort.“Business development takes a good three to five years — you don’t just walk into a place and make it happen immediately,” Ms Packwood said.Around 200 people attended a lunchtime panel featuring Bermuda Stock Exchange CEO Greg Wojciechowski, Bermuda Monetary Authority communications director Pat Philip-Bassett, Dr Charles Ludolph, the US-based economist who conducted the Business Bermuda 2012 Economic Impact Report, and Ms Packwood, moderated by Ross Webber, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Business Development and Tourism.Around 80 people attended the insurance and reinsurance panel, while sessions on asset management and trust business were also well attended. Ms Packwood said there was a lot of interest in insurance-linked securities, an area in which Bermuda has been claiming an ever growing share of the market over the past three years, since the BMA introduced its special purpose insurer designation that created a regulatory framework for instruments such as catastrophe bonds.