One of the men who helped establish the insurance business in Bermuda is back with new ideas about how to engage Bermudians and see them succeed in top jobs within the Island's number one economic pillar.

A central requirement is for Government to show willingness to invest funds that will enable university graduate Bermudians to achieve the finishing layer of their industry training here on the Island, ready to step into senior roles within the multi-billion insurance and reinsurance world.

In the late 1970s Andrew Barile was one of those who worked to set up the Bermuda Insurance Institute.

In the past 30 years insurance in Bermuda has moved a world away from the car insurance-type industry, with small, locally-owned companies that was present in Hamilton before the days of ACE and XL.

Finding ways that allow Bermudians to reach the highest levels of the Island's most prosperous business has been taxing the minds of Government ministers for some time.

Mr. Barile, who is helping chair this week's 21st anniversary International Reinsurance Congress at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel, arrived on the Island with some ideas.

Now president and CEO of his California-based Andrew Barile Consulting Corporation, he said: "In 1978 we were working on setting up the Bermuda Insurance Institute and that was the beginning of training for Bermudains to understand what was a captive insurance company.

"We started out with the concept that more and more Bermudians would take on the senior management of the companies and that started to be successful."

However, the Bermuda insurance companies themselves soon changed from being their own captive companies to being much larger public companies with shareholders.

Mr. Barile said that created a big difference with watchful shareholders around the world paying close attention to how the companies were being run and all too willing to sue over mismanagement.

That raised the stakes and forced companies to ensure they had the most qualified personnel working for them. Added to that was the increasing size of the companies, up from a dozen or so staff to 100 or more.

On the one hand the ever growing size and number of insurers and reinsurers would appear to require more raw talent, but not necessarily so. Mr. Barile points out that advances in technology solves many of those issues.

"I know of one Bermuda reinsurance company for example that is outsourcing its catastrophe modelling to India.

"There are also senior staff flying in during the week and flying out at the end of the week. You have data capturing that can now be done anywhere in the world."

However, the highest level positions are always there and there is no reason why intelligent, qualified Bermudians who have gone through the college/university system cannot be given the fine-tuning tweak that finishes off their vocational training background necessary to assume a leading role at the highest echelon of industry.

The key components are genuine Government commitment in the form of hard cash funding, and tapping into the wealth of talent and experience that already exists on the Island in the form of CEOs, CFOs and others who could mentor and guest lecture on the Bermuda-based "finishing" courses.

Mr. Barile said: "Government has to take a stronger role and provide funds for the education of Bermudians for the industry. These are big companies but there is no reason why, say, the top person in their statistical department should not be a Bermudian - but they should be trained.

"Bermudians should be getting the opportunity to take the courses that put them into the next league.

"There should be courses here such as 'How to be a CEO of a Bermuda insurance company'. You could get some of the CEOs here as guest lecturers.

"Why not do this in Bermuda? Why not hold courses about how to be president of a captive company or a Bermuda insurance company?

"When we first started here we had very limited financial resources, but now I look around (Bermuda) and I see a lot of resources. Bermuda has changed and the needs for insurance education have completely changed.

"You could have a course on how to be a casualty treaty reinsurer, that is quite specific but there are a lot of companies here who are doing that.

"It is not as if Bermuda does not have the resources here.

"Bermuda has all the talent here so why not have a course on how to be a reinsurance broker the reinsurance underwriter? That is how specific they have to be here.

"Government has to step in and provide the resources for this. There has to be an incentive. The people here have the talent but they do not being exposed to (the opportunities)."