The insurance industry is not immune from the challenges facing everyone else living in Bermuda and if there is a problem with crime or traffic the industry will be affected XL president and CEO Brian O' Hara said yesterday at the Hamilton Rotary Club.

Mr. O'Hara was the guest speaker at the Hamilton Rotary Club weekly luncheon at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club and he presented a speech entitled "Sustainable Development and the International Insurance Industry in Bermuda".

"Let me be absolutely clear when it comes to sustainable development there is only one community in Bermuda," Mr. O' Hara said.

"I hear people people talk about the international insurance industry as if it were separate and apart from the rest of the Island's community. It isn't! "When it comes to sustaining the development of the industry we have to recognise we are one with the community at large."

Mr. O'Hara said Bermuda's draft sustainable development strategy emphasises that Bermudians need to have access to job opportunities while at the same time having access to tools that will help them fulfil their potential.

He said XL's workforce in Bermuda of 350 includes more than 270 Bermudians and spouses of Bermudians, a number of them in senior positions.

"We have developed and trained many of them, sending them to our offices overseas to develop their skills knowledge and experience."

Mr. O' Hara said one of the great benefits Bermuda has in hosting international businesses is that for the most talented and hard working local employees the world can be their oyster.

"Products can be copied but people cannot. Investing them by supporting education programmes is key to the development of the Bermuda workforce and vital to the success of the Island's sustainable development programme."

"Education is very close to my heart and at XL we have chosen education as the central theme of our global corporate social responsibility programme."

"In Bermuda we have committed to providing assistance to selected educational programmes both in the form of funding and outreach, globally over 70 percent of our corporate giving goes on educational programmes."

Mr. O' Hara said XL in Bermuda has contributed several million dollars to training and education over the last few years.

"The XL Educational Initiative of Bermuda which we developed in the 1990's to support the IT curriculum for Bermuda's Government school's later became the Bermuda Technology Collaborative supported by a wide cross section of the community."

"We maintain a chair at St. Johns University in the US where many Bermudians have qualified and since 1990 when the XL Insurance Scholarship began we have awarded $1.3 million in scholarships to Bermudians to help prepare for their professional careers."

Mr. O'Hara also noted that XL is the largest single provider of financial support to the Bermuda Foundation for Insurance Studies.