Everything appears to be going according to plan at Endurance Specialty. After a year and a half in business, the company has just announced first quarter net earnings of $51.2 million, up from $3.3 million in the first quarter of 2002.

It completed an initial public offering at the end of February and can be fairly said to have graduated from "start-up " to "established" insurer.

Like its fellow Bermuda insurance companies, Montpelier Re and Platinum, who also listed recently, Endurance Specialty may have benefited from the dearth of initial public offerings.

Its IPO was oversubscribed and the share price has performed well. Endurance's stock opened trading at $23 per share and yesterday the stock was trading at $28.60 - a good increase for two months.

Chief executive Kenneth LeStrange is now focused on ensuring that Endurance stock lives up to its name in terms of continuing return for shareholders.

"Return on equity is our key metric in terms of our success. Financially, I'd say that would be our dominant viewpoint."

For the first quarter 2003, the company achieved pre-tax return on equity of 3.4 percent.

"I feel very good about the improvement on return on equity for this first quarter," said Mr. LeStrange. "We have planned for a 12 to 13 percent return on equity for this year and so far it would appear that we are on track." He points out that they were started from the challenging position of $1.2 billion in equity capital on the first day with zero revenue. Now the revenue is flowing in with gross premiums reaching $362.1 million for the first quarter, up 176.6 percent from the same period in 2002.

Endurance has a diverse range of business with three reinsurance segments and three insurance segments. However, the catastrophe reinsurance produced the largest net earnings of $21.7 million. Across the industry it has been a benign period for catastrophe losses and in 2002 catastrophe reinsurance produced income of $43.9 million.

Asked whether they have altered course at all since setting up post-September 11, 2001, Mr. LeStrange says: "Directors & Officers was in the original business plan, but we chose not to underwrite much D&O last year because we thought the market had not corrected."

The first quarter saw Endurance begin to write business in this area and the first quarter results reflect this, but D&O is not a big driver yet.

The business plan is based on underwriting profits as the main driver of the company's fortunes. "We have an extremely conservative investment strategy... To date they have no equity investments and corporate bonds are all 'AA' rated or better. It's probably the most boring investment portfolio in our business," says Mr. LeStrange.

The company has a strategy of maintaining low-fixed costs such as salaries and rent. Mr. LeStrange says: "We will add to staff incrementally in Bermuda, but our 'ramp up' is more or less complete."

The company now has approximately 100 employees around the world, of whom 56 are Bermudian. They have outgrown their offices on Par-La-Ville Road and will be moving into undisclosed new offices in two months time.

He declines to reveal where the new offices will be. "I'm not even going to give you a hint," Mr. LeStrange says, laughing.

Other Bermuda start-ups have said that their first year was all about building their infrastructure and 2003 will see the new companies really take off. But Mr. Le Strange distinguishes his own approach: "We were building business and infrastructure in tandem.''

He says that last year Endurance did a lot of work establishing their information technology and modelling capacities. The work that they did allowed them to complete their audit in the third quarter of 2002 which was quite early.

They were also early with their IPO, and it took some mettle to launch during one of the worst equity markets in memory. "We sensed from our formation that we would become a public company. We filed our documents one year after we opened for business which is fast. Not fast enough for the crew down here though... Tony Taylor [chief executive of Montpelier Re beat us!" says Mr. LeStrange.