David Burt is drawing a line between the buzz-laden “crypto” era and Bermuda’s emerging “digital finance” identity. In a bold signal at the PwC Insurance Summit on Wednesday, the Premier declared: “I haven’t used that word since 2017.”

Instead, during a seaside chat with Lee Harris of the Financial Times, held at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, he explained: “We’ve used the words ‘digital assets’. We look at it more broadly when it comes to digital finance, because we recognise that the digitisation of finance is here.”

Mr Burt’s semantic shift is more than wordplay.

He continued: “Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, but not enough people are talking about what the tokenisation of financial assets will be for the financial services sector. And the reality is that Bermuda has taken a lead in that aspect, having the regulator that is one of the most respected on the planet when it comes to digital assets.”

The Premier added that the evolution from “crypto” to “digital finance” is about future-proofing Bermuda’s capital markets, adding that Bermuda’s financial innovations “happened because of the talent that we have here, because of the thoughtfulness”.

He continued: “We’re going to see the expansion of regular financial services onto digital finance, whether that's stablecoins, whether those are different smart contracts. All those types of items are necessary to make sure that our market is more efficient.”

Ms Harris’s questions did not shy away from recent scandals, such as the high-profile incident involving embattled Bermudian-based former reinsurer 777 Re, that have prompted international scrutiny of insurance regulation.

He called the incident an outlier, but addressed the issue head-on: “It is easy to focus on the outlier, rather than focus on the high-quality businesses we’ve attracted. But the reality is that whenever you develop a new industry, you need to make sure that you’re regulated and perfect for purpose.”

Mr Burt emphasised Bermuda’s dynamic response, saying that life insurers themselves know best the enhancements made to the regime, which he said will continue and which have already won international approval.

“When you have persons like the head of the [US National Association of Insurance Commissioners] and others saying we’re not worried about these insurers that are in Bermuda, because we know they’re well regulated, I think that we have done our job.”

As international finance adapts, Mr Burt said he is steering Bermuda towards a tokenised and tech-savvy future. Despite a shifting regulatory landscape and global headlines, he reaffirmed the island’s reputation: “I think that you would compare Bermuda regulations to anywhere around the world and see that we are best in class.”