Bermuda is ripe for sustaining more growth in the reinsurance market - that is the view of Steven Beard, CEO of outsourcing company XChanging.

Mr. Beard, who was talking at the 21st International Reinsurance Congress, reckons there are a number of questions the Island's reinsurers must ask themselves to retain a cutting edge and move forward at the same exponential rate in today's competitive marketplace.

Meanwhile Alex Letts, CEO of RI3K, a trading provision firm, set out a blueprint for the future of Bermuda's electronic processing system.

Mr.Beard posed the question of whether the Island's reinsurance industry can continue to grow at the same pace it has been developing over the past few years and, if so, what do reinsurers have to do to maintain that?

"If you are going to grow, my underlying assumption is that you are going to need to compete," he said.

"We need to understand on what front Bermuda is competing on."I think there are ways going forward where Bermuda could focus more of its attention on brand, relationships and rating and less of your attention on building your back office infrastructures.

"He pointed to the fact that some of the world's largest reinsurers such as Munich Re, Swiss Re and Berkshire Hathaway have been able to sustain growth and therefore Bermuda, with its large base of intellectual capital, can do likewise.

"S&P's rating of the top 40 reinsurance groups places 12 inBermuda - this clearly is an attractive environment for reinsurers to be based," he said.

"If we look at the future landscape to look where Bermuda is going to compete, it needs the infrastructure to do so, and if you are to get into more attritional classes, more volume, more commodity, you need the infrastructure to support you to do so.

"In terms of total insurance assets in the 10 years to 2005 Bermuda's total insurance assets from $95 billion to $330bn, so there is a serious amount of capital on the Island, which is capital to be proud of.

Underpinning all, he said, is the positioning of the back office and what it can offer in terms of high quality of service, a reduction in cost per transaction, an extrapolation of head count and the fact it is the single true source of data and information.

"We have a talent pool in Bermuda that we need to continue to grow but are these skills tangible?", he said.

"Can we move people between roles, are people cross-trained to support growth for the future? Also, what does it cost per transaction?

"We would encourage people to collaborate where you can get no more individual advantage. Alternatively leap-frog other markets - so by working together, by sharing resources, by sharing ideas, by moving things forward, you actually get beyond some of the other markets internationally.

Mr. Beard concluded that the keys to winning in competition are managing your rating, building your relationships and employing your expertise where it can make the most difference.

"We think Bermuda has got a squeeze, both in terms of having an unlimited growth opportunity, but also some constraints around scarce resources and premises on the Island," he said.

"We see the current model today is that if you were to extrapolate your volume in getting some new classes, you are going to have to extrapolate your head count and that is going to put even more pressure on the current infrastructure you have.

"We do see there as opportunities around outsourcing, we don't see that as being a threat to local jobs, we actually see that the capacity we have today in the market means that there needs to be a new model for the future, one that does not require an extrapolation of head count.

"What we are working on with RI3K is a proposed model for the future and also we are seeing a huge shift from paper to electronics.

"Mr. Letts talked about how his company is trying to get the reinsurance industry to start putting information into the market in a format where the data does not need to be rekeyed, thus cutting out any errors.

He said they are planning to integrate some of the platforms used by brokers and underwriters in the market to deal with claims and settlements more effectively and linking the online trading services to build up a global infrastructure from front office to back office.

Mr. Letts said: "We are going to be offering an outsource service for companies that want business services off their premises, to link underwriting systems to the outsource process and on into the global settlement system and to link the front line trading capabilities into that infrastructure."And that is the beginning of a global infrastructure for processing reinsurance."

He said his company is planning to put this system in place as early as the first quarter of 2008 and the beauty of it is that it allows traders to settle their account online and for the broker to pass the slip straight onto the trading service and for the underwriter systems to be linked to that.

"By the end of 2008, it should be capable for Bermuda to have brokers and underwriters connected to a message service; the message service is connected to the insurance utility, which is the market directory and the document repository and in the middle lies the trading service, which is Internet access, but it is also connected up, so that every single time a trade happens on the central service, it pushes the data out to the back office systems of the brokers and the underwriters."