A new insurance conference, ?PLUS: The Bermuda Perspective?, held earlier this month is set to become an annual event following its unexpected success, according to organisers.

When the idea was first aired to hold the conference in Bermuda, the event committee expected to attract about 50 from the US and about 75 from Bermuda.

One of the organisers, David Bell (left), vice president and global professional lines manager at Allied World Assurance Co. Ltd., had higher, maybe with attendance reaching 175 overall.

?But we were blown away by the response,? said Mr. Bell. ?We got approximately 240 people. In retrospect we didn?t block out enough rooms at the Hamilton Princess, and had to overflow into Waterloo House, and then overflow into Elbow Beach and then finally take up rooms in the Southampton Princess.?

And the interest generated by the three days of seminars, panel discussions and speakers has led them to make sure the conference becomes an annual event ? and now hope to attract about 300 attendees to the event next year.

This would make it one of the largest insurance conferences held on the Island during the annual calendar of events.

?The feedback we have has has been very positive,? said Mr. Bell. ?We have not yet had a meeting to look at evaluations forms filled in during the event, but verbally, we have heard a lot of good feedback.?

The event attracted some of the biggest names in Bermuda?s insurance industry and had a headline-grabbing line up of speakers as part of the event organised under the banner of the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS).

The event started with a panel which included ACE and XL bosses, Brian Duperreault and Brian O?Hara as well as Scott Carmelani, chief executive officer of Allied World Assurance, Ralph Jones of Arch and Geoffrey Smith of Starr Excess Liability.

Unfortunately Mr. Duperreault could not attend due to a bereavement in the family of one of his top executives, but the panel was lively and touched on many controversial topics.

Poacher-turned-gamekeeper Barry Minkow spoke on detecting white collar crime ? and enjoyed himself so much that he may come back to give talks on the Island in future.

Mr. Minkow made headlines for being the youngest person in the US business history to take a company public -doing it before he was 21 years old.

However, the company was built on fraud and deceit and he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Now he has turned his life around and used his experiences with this fraud and other white-collar crime and criminals to disclose the techniques and methodology used to circumvent due diligence.

So far Mr. Minkow and the Fraud Discovery Institute have uncovered more than $1 billion in prospective fraud in the past eight months.

Right-wing political analyst Fred Barnes, the well-known talking head and editor of the Weekly Standard, also gave a talk ? and also had dinner with the Premier Alex Scott and the Finance Minister Paula Cox.

?We are hoping this event gets on the calendar and becomes the event to attend,? said Mr. Bell. ?We were blessed with the May weather this year. The cocktail party we held on Monday evening was a Bermuda Chamber of Commerce day. There were these executives who had flown in that day from a rainy US , and after a few hours were sipping cocktails thinking what a good idea it was to come to PLUS.?