High-profile insurance brokerage start-up Integro is about to put Bermuda on the map of its expanding network with the announcement on Friday that well-known market executive Mike Fisher is to head the local office.

Integro, a firm that is setting many industry tongues? wagging for its bold approach of stepping into the market at a time of when the broking industry has been under a regulatory cloud, is being led by famed insurance industry veteran Bob Clements.

The Bermuda operation has yet to secure office space and Mr. Fisher, a Bermudian, is the only hire so far, but he says he is looking for both an address and specialist employees to move forward with what Integro?s executives say is a new approach to insurance broking.

Mr. Fisher?s joining Integro continues a trend for with all of Integro?s announced executive appointments so far being recruited from rival Marsh & McLennan.

Integro was only set up in April but already it is a force to be reckoned with more than $300 millions in private equity investment backing it. It hasn?t said how many clients it has attracted to date but does qualify its customer base as global commercial insurance buyers.

Mr. Fisher, managing director and president of Integro (Bermuda) Ltd., comes to Integro after five years heading Marsh Global Markets (Bermuda) Ltd. Out of 20 years working in the industry, Mr. Fisher can count 18 years with Marsh.

Although a new kid on the block, Integro is turning heads after Mr. Clements ? a man who has been pivotal to the establishment of a handful of companies, including Bermuda figurehead firms ACE Limited, XL Capital and the newer Arch Capital ? stepped back into the broker arena with what he called a ?new approach? to placing insurance business.

Mr. Clements, a former Marsh & McLennan president, has padded out Integro?s executive suite by bringing on board two former Marsh executives, Peter Garvey and Roger Egan.

The trio have said Integro ? from the Latin word meaning ?make well, make better? ? is designed to offer a fresh alternative for a sector now tarnished by the allegations of industry abuses, largely at Marsh.

Beleaguered Marsh hit hard times last year when New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer launched a civil suit alleging broker compensation abuses and illegal bid rigging between the broker and some of the firms it secured insurance from to fulfil client?s risk management needs.

In the weeks since Integro set up ? the company is headquartered in New York with operations across the US, in Bermuda and plans to soon be in London ? it has ramped up its ranks with nine executive appointments across its fledgling network, and all being recruited from Marsh.

Mr. Fisher told he is hiring for the Bermuda operation and hopes to have a staff of up to ten people by the end of the year, but he isn?t focused just on Marsh to find talent for the new organisation.

In total he expects the Integro (Bermuda) employee count to eventually reach 25 to 30 staff but that will happen over the next few years as the company builds its infrastructure, he said.

?I am looking for the right people and to put them into the right roles,? he said.

As for where the ?right people? can be found, Mr. Fisher said that could be in the Bermuda operations of any of the broker offices, including Marsh and Aon, or from the underwriter ranks of Bermuda?s insurance operations, or going overseas to recruit as necessary.

The mandate for the Bermuda office is the placement of clients? insurance programmes with Bermuda-based carriers.

Mr. Fisher said Integro (Bermuda) will be focused on placing insurance for clients in the following areas: property, casualty, health care and financial lines.

He said it was expected that most of the direct business, or insurance, the company is asked to place will be on behalf of US-based Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 firms. As for the reasons why he would quit a long career with Marsh and pin his hopes on Integro, Mr. Fisher said he had reached as high as he could go in the Bermuda office at Marsh.

?The next move would have been to go to New York or London.?

He wasn?t keen to do either largely because it would mean uprooting his young family.

Mr. Fisher and his wife Sheila have two daughters, aged eight and 11.

He added that he had also had to deal with a lot of issues in his five years at the top of Marsh?s Bermuda operations ? from limited involvement in the Spitzer probe of Marsh, to the devastating blow to the firm when hundreds of Marsh employees were killed in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and in 2004, Hurricane Fabian?s devastation of Bermuda employees homes ? and he was ready for a change.

?The only other thing that interested me was to do something on my own. This does that in a way, I have the opportunity to build something from scratch. And it allows me to be here in Bermuda.?

Integro chief executive officer Roger Egan is pleased with the decision.

?Mike Fisher is a recognised leader in Bermuda, which is a very important marketplace for Integro.

?We are very fortunate to have him join our management team.?