Internet start-up company, Worldinsure, which was set up in 2000 in a bid to provide systems to help insurance companies process applications, has gone under.

The company, which was riding the dot com wave but with an insurance twist, had a petition for its winding up put to the Supreme Court on July 25 and is due to be heard on August 22.

Creditors and contributors have to give notice they will appear on this date "no later than" 5 p.m. on August 21 at Conyers Dill and Pearman's offices in Clarendon House.

The company was set up by John Hele who said he set up on the Island because Bermuda was the best place to headquarter an Internet-based business.

Mr. Hele said in April 2001: "The consultants said that Bermuda was number one.

"It has a stable government, it is a place you can attract venture capital to, it has a great infrastructure and it has an educated work force.

"They (consultants) said if I had wanted to employ a lot of people, then Dublin would be the choice. This was the place. I met with Government officials and we had our business plan approved."

The Bermuda technology company said it was the first company in the world to provide a fully automated system for insurance companies to process applications.

It closed its first deal with Royal Sun Alliance Life Insurance Co. in Canada in 2001 and planned to outsource its front-end application and underwriting services using Worldinsure in a bid to make the service available to more than 5,000 independent agents across Canada.

At the time the company was working on deals for its business-to-business platforms for medically underwritten insurance such as life insurance products with insurers right across North America.

The company, which had offices in Church Street with a staff of four, had hoped to expand in North America and move to Europe and Asia by 2002/2003.

The Bermuda-based company claimed it is the first company in the world to develop a special software package, which was to be sold to insurance companies.

Worldinsure claimed the product would save time for customers who normally have to fill out reams of paperwork, which can take up to 12 weeks, to get life insurance.

Brokers then had to wade through the documents and then track them as they pass through the back office.

Hele said he had developed one electronic form that could be filled out on a computer either by a customer or a customer with a broker, and this same document will then be processed through a computer. It was not available directly to the public but was designed for insurance companies and distributors.

The documents generated by the programme would include medical information, which will be plugged in and the programme will calculate the risk and help work out the cost of insurance.

The programme has the capacity to do what is called automated underwriting - i.e. calculating the cost of insurance.

The company, which had funding of $31 million, not only had offices in Hamilton but also the US and Canada with a staff worldwide of 50 in 2001 and hoped to expand to 100 by the end of that year.

The investors in the start-up were XDL Intervest Capital Corporation, Dorset Partners, CIBC Capital Partners, Princeton Holdings, Sun Life Financial, New Millennium Internet Ventures Fund Inc, BMO Nesbitt Burns Equity Partners Inc, Bayshore Capital and eLab Technology Ventures Inc.