branch to write excess of loss reinsurance in the marine, offshore energy and aviation business.

Senior vice president and chief financial and administrative officer, Mr.

Charles Hays, said, "Our rationale for seeking a licence in the UK to do that was primarily based on the fact that that was business that Mid Ocean felt that it wanted to write.

"But in order to write it, we needed to be in London. That kind of business doesn't make its way to Bermuda because it is not big chunky pieces of business like property catastrophe business.

"Many of the companies here are writing the chunky property cat business, but not many are writing what tends to be smaller, London market kinds of lines.

And that's why we applied for that London licence.'' Mid Ocean established a contact office soon after setting up in Bermuda at the end of 1992. But some months ago they decided to get a UK licence and establish an office at the London Underwriting Centre.

Mr. Hays said, "About 60 percent of our 1994 business was property catastrophe. But from the very beginning we have written business other than property cat. In the first year of our existence about 40 percent of our business was not. It was marine aviation and offshore energy business, but not excess of loss reinsurance. That's the part we will be looking to write in London. That is our game plan.

"It was always our strategy not to be exclusively property cat. But some of the other Bermuda companies may be. We each have our own strategy. Each company has gone about doing business in a different way.

"In our case, we always believed that we should write something other than property cat and the percentage of that fluctuates depending on market conditions.'' The company hired underwriters in London, who had been commuting to Bermuda to write the business.

Mr. Hays said, "If you look at the relative size of the markets, the aviation and marine specialties that we are talking about writing, is much, much smaller market than what we write here in property cat and the rest of the business we write here.

"Based on what our current mandate is in terms of the businesses we do now, we would not envision that that business we write in London would come anywhere near the size of what we do here, because the market is just a lot smaller.

"Now markets change, who knows what could happen. But it was not our game plan, when we began this process, nor do we currently believe that the kind of business that we are seeking to get a licence to write would be anywhere near the size of what we currently write in Bermuda.''