Good times for Bermuda's insurance companies will last for four more years, according to industry veteran Jack Byrne.

Speaking to The Royal Gazette yesterday, Mr. Byrne, who is chairman of White Mountains insurance company, said that sloppy underwriting and accounting had led to many of the woes in US and European insurance companies.

But Bermuda had been left untouched by the crises in the rest of the insurance would and were in a position to mop up any business left behind.

When asked if White Mountains was going to move in and fill the gap by other insurance companies leaving some markets, he said: "In a limited and socially responsible way. All we are doing is God's work. Somebody has to provide a marketplace for the world's losses..."

Joking aside, Mr. Byrne and White Mountains chief executive officer Ray Barrette said that it was poor practices that had led to the global crisis in the insurance world. Mr. Barrette said: "High investment returns that were covering up for bad underwriting."

Mr. Byrne added: "The sloppy accounting followed the sloppy underwriting and you really needed both (to have a problem). And when the pigeons came home to roost... they didn't count them, they were hiding."

He said the bad business hit many places around the world, from the US Midwest to Switzerland and Germany, with companies dropping out of business all over the world.

"Someone like State Farm lost $15 billion in underwriting in three years. It is a huge company, but to lose $15 billion? That is a lot of money. There has been a lot of damage to the capital base of US companies," said Mr. Barrette. "You have to keep your powder dry, because when you need it, when other people have lost it."

But Mr. Barrette added that rather than it being a hard market now that will continue, it was a disciplined market that had learnt from the mistakes of the past.

He said: "We see enough damage to companies' balance sheets. They have lost so much money and have learned a lesson that it is tough to make money. We see a disciplined market, whether it is going to be a hard market is tough to tell, but it will be a disciplined market. We don't see a lot of naive capital coming in and sweeping through the market and dropping prices by 30 or 40 percent. But, over time, the market will soften."

Mr. Byrne said there had been a lot of damage done in Europe and the US to the balance sheets and companies had lost their ratings. "But not here in Bermuda.

"But we see lots of people leaving pieces of the market where they used to be important players in. And so I am, and I know Ray is quite confident that the next four or five years it will be a disciplined marketplace. And maybe forever, maybe we have broken the back of these cycles that we have been in..."

White Mountains was originally formed as a Delaware corporation in 1980. In October, 1999 it completed a corporate reorganisation that changed its domicile from Delaware to Bermuda. White Mountains' common shares received a primary listing on the New York Stock Exchange in October, 1985.