Just over three months into the top job at BF&M Ltd., president and CEO John Wight has his eyes set on local and global expansion as well as one of the biggest challenges for his industry ? rising health care costs.

Mr. Wight moved into BF&M's corner office overlooking the harbour on January 1. It was formerly occupied by 43-year veteran of the company Glenn Titterton, who retired as president and chief executive officer after 14 years.

Pictures of Mr. Wight's wife and two daughters, aged 11 and13, feature prominently in his new space, but a number of yet-to-be filled shelves as well as a desk and credenza stacked with foot-high piles of documents make it clear that his new role overseeing 120 staff has kept him very busy.

"This was Glenn Titterton's old office and I kind of felt out of place for the first couple days but since then we have just had so much on the go it has been an easier transition that I thought it would be," said Mr. Wight.

Mr. Wight comes to the job with a financial background rather than the insurance background of his predecessors. He is a chartered accountant by trade and sits on the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bermuda. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Commerce and a Graduate Diploma in Accounting from Concordia University and has also attended management programmes at Stanford University and Dartmouth College.

Before taking over the job, he worked closely with the former president for the past decade having first joined BF&M in 1992 as a corporate controller and then advancing to vice president finance and finally to executive vice president, chief financial officer and secretary. Previously, he worked for the Bermuda Hospitals Board, Coopers & Lybrand in Bermuda and Ernst & Young in Montreal.

"My background, experience and training is in accounting and finance and investments and that area whereas the prior CEOs of the company have been from the insurance side of things. [People with financial backgrounds becoming CEOs] is becoming more commonplace these days in business for a number of reasons. Business is fundamentally so finance oriented and number oriented and that isn't to say that you don't need qualified insurance people and every other discipline in a company but it gives you a great background for what has to be done in the future to drive a company to success."

Mr. Titterton handed over a "very strong company with a great foundation to build on". A.M. Best recently upgraded the financial strength rating of the company to A (Excellent) and Mr. Wight recently announced that BF&M's earnings for 2004 had increased 5.4 percent over 2003 to $9,910, 240. BF&M is poised to reposition some of its businesses in 2005, but Mr. Wight was unwilling to disclose the details at the time of this interview. The company also continues to look at expansion here and abroad.

"In the last few years we have tried to develop and expand certain lines of business. We acquired the group business from Sun Life in 2002 and we acquired the Can Life group business in 2004. We're currently administering some individual life business so we are in the expansion mode both in terms of acquiring business locally from other companies and also we're looking at overseas expansion as well."

As far as the latter expansion, BF&M is presently continuing its negotiations to acquire the a majority interest in Insurance Corporation of Barbados Ltd. (ICBL).

Closer to home, Mr. Wight said there are fewer and fewer issues in a long-standing dispute with Bermuda Fire and Marine. A settlement in 1999 put an end to any future possible litigation and Bermuda Fire and Marine's interest in the company is decreasing.

"By 2006 they have the option to acquire a few more shares from us but we have the option to repurchase those shares so it may be that by the end of 2006 Bermuda Fire and Marine has no shareholding whatsoever in BF&M," Mr. Wight said.

Not surprisingly, Mr Wight expects healthcare to remain one of the major challenges for local insurers including BF&M's Life Insurance company, which provides life, health and pension products. The health account was the one line of business that performed poorly in 2004, recording its worst year on record due principally to the frequency and severity of major medical claims overseas and outpatient hospital services and prescription drugs locally.

Mr. Wight sees Government's effort to expand the partnerships involved in Bermuda's healthcare system, as the key hope to address the issues.

"There are so many self-interests involved here between the hospital, doctor, Government, the insurers and customers that the health council that is being formed is the move forward to addressing the issues because the council will have participants from all those different groups on it so if they can't address them and come to some meaningful compromises on our issues going forward, I'm not sure how we're going to address them," he said.

Mr. Wight moved to Bermuda from Montreal, Canada, two decades ago "to get away from the cold winters". While he grew up in a country with socialised healthcare he is a staunch defender of the Bermuda system.

"We have the best of both worlds here. It is a combination of the private healthcare system and the public and despite all the problems with the healthcare system in Bermuda, in terms of comparing our system to others around the world, ours is far better than most. In terms of comparing it against Canada this is a better system. Socialised medicine does provide adequate care to everybody but the waiting lists in Canada now for operations are in some cases so extreme that people are literally dying on the operating table before being operated on. All in all we have a very good healthcare system but we just have to address some of the problems that aren't unique to Bermuda, that are really in all countries around the world but on a smaller scale involve in Bermuda now."