The deputy CEO of the world’s third-largest (re) insurance broker says it’s no coincidence the company chose Bermuda as the location of the company’s top management meetings.Willis Group Holdings deputy CEO, Steve Hearn, who also serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Willis Global, says Bermuda was, is and hopefully always will be important to the company.Mr Hearn and Willis Re CEO, John Cavanagh sat down with The Royal Gazette for an exclusive interview. They were in Bermuda along with the rest of the Willis Global management team and members of the company’s overall leadership to meet with Willis Bermuda employees, clients and Government.“We get together four or five times a year, and we deliberately chose Bermuda as a place to come together — we could’ve met in London or New York,” Mr Hearn said.“This is a very, very important jurisdiction for us — has been historically, continues to be, and we believe will be in the future. So, as we have our entire leadership team here, it’s an opportunity for us to engage with our clients in terms of Willis Re and the markets which we trade with in terms of our insurance business.”The meetings come on the heels of several management changes, earnings losses and impending job cuts at the company. In January, Dominic Casserley stepped in as the company’s new chief executive officer, after Joe Plumeri, who served as chairman and CEO for 12 years, stepped down. He will serve as the company’s non-executive chairman through July.The London-based broker’s fourth-quarter earnings report brought mixed results. While Willis posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $804 million, it also reported a 6.3 percent increase in revenue and a 7.5 percent increase in organic commissions and fees for the quarter — a greater result, Mr Hearn says, than any of the company’s largest competitors.“Fantastic set of results for Q4,” Mr Hearn said. “Our results, as far as I can recall, were unparalleled relative to the competitors — 7.5 percent organic growth rate across the company, which was just outstanding.”Organic growth for Willis Global, Mr Hearn’s segment under which WillisRe falls, was up 11.6 percent. Mr Hearn attributes the successes of the last quarter to several factors.“It wasn’t a series of accidents or coincidences or good fortune, although you obviously want a bit of that as well, the business has traded well. We had good retention, we had excellent new business growth, and we performed well,” he said.“All three of the segments in Willis performed well in Q4. So Global grew 11.6 percent, but so did Willis North America and Willis International.”While Willis Re falls under Willis Global, Willis Bermuda’s direct side insurance business falls under North America, which reported organic growth of 3.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2012 — its best result in six years.“Willis North America performed well in Q4 and that’s important — over 40 percent of our revenue is in North America as an organisation, so how it performs is obviously very important to the total result,” Mr Hearn said. “Bermuda grew for us. We had a good quarter and good year here.”“Bermuda had a good year last year in terms of results despite Sandy and everything that was thrown at it, this market performed very well and continues to be a very significant insurance and reinsurance market for the world,” Mr Hearn continued.“Now, what everybody wants to know is will we sustain that and I can’t comment on that in terms of Q1 for obvious reasons — we’re a quoted company, but we feel very confident about our future, very positive about our future,” he said.The company’s future is, in large part, why they chose to meet here in Bermuda. Mr Hearn and Mr Cavanagh say Bermuda is so vital to the success of the company, they wanted to come and meet with leaders in the new OBA government. They say growth is number one on the company’s agenda.“From a reinsurance perspective, we’ve got a number of very important clients here and we always have had,” Mr Cavanagh said. “Their central hub is in Bermuda. But as an important reinsurance market, we see an increase in activity and it remains the central core of the cat movement, really.”Mr Cavanagh says that with alternative capital residing here and becoming increasingly more important in the reinsurance industry, he sees the company’s position increasing in Bermuda — making a business-friendly government all the more appealing to them.“It’s been a great contributor, Bermuda, to our industry. It’s a proper market similar to London. This isn’t a disparate group of different companies. They act like a market,” Mr Cavanagh said. “And it’s a very important component of what we do. So we’re very keen to see a pro-business government.”Mr Hearn and Mr Cavanagh met late last week with Bermuda Premier, Craig Cannonier and various Cabinet members including Minister of Finance, Bob Richards, Minister of Economic Development, Grant Gibbons and Minister of Home Affairs, Michael Fahy. What exactly was on the agenda, they would not say, but Mr Hearn said it was important to them to get an understanding of the goals of the new government.“It [Bermuda] is so important to us that we’re meeting with the government,” Mr Hearn said. “I think what we’ve read and heard, and hopefully hear in our meetings, is very positive from a business perspective. It seems to be a good business agenda in terms of what they’re trying to do,” Mr Hearn said.“We’d like to understand, in more detail, the measures that they’re putting in place in terms of encouraging business here — we’d like to understand that from them. And I think to encourage them, frankly. We think it’s a very positive thing, and we’d like to applaud and encourage them in terms of their endeavours,” Mr Hearn said.“I don’t think we’ve had any particular challenge more of less than anybody else. But the types of issues in terms of work permits, longevity, renewals — have been challenges and can be frustrating,” he added.Mr Hearn and Mr Cavanagh say the company’s success here, coupled with more pro-business measures, will help them grow in Bermuda.“We’ve added to staff on the reinsurance side and will continue to do so,” Mr Cavanagh said. “We see it as a very important market for us from a production standpoint.”When asked if any of the 200 recently announced companywide job cuts at Willis would be in Bermuda, Mr Hearn told us there were no plans for layoffs here.“200 over 17,000 — that’s a very modest number,” Mr Hearn said. “It is driven out of restructuring, some inefficiency. There is some concentration in certain areas — not Bermuda.”“It’s a real scalpel, not an axe. This isn’t a blanket, ‘get rid of ten percent of your workforce’ or anything like that,” Mr Hearn added.“Make no bones about it — we want to grow Bermuda,” Mr Hearn said. “ We have a belief in this market, we have a belief in our company and its capabilities here.”