There is no insurance industry -- that's what delegates at a Mergers & Acquisitions conference at the Southampton Princess Hotel were told yesterday.

The unexpected message was delivered by Erich Sippel, a consultant in financial services and one of the afternoon speakers at the Strategic Research Institute's conference on "Mergers & Acquisitions in the insurance and financial services industry''.

Mr. Sippel's point was that convergence has already happened, to such an extent that the very nature of the financial services industry has changed.

"It is no longer a financial services industry at all,'' he told an audience of about 50, "it is an information services industry.'' Something of a maverick -- although his arguments were at all times cogent and coherent -- Mr. Sippel also argued that the Internet was not bringing about a technical revolution, but is causing, instead "an information revolution''.

Mr. Sippel's presentation was perhaps the most interesting of an absorbing first day at the conference, which took as its tagline: "Acquire or be acquired: the strategic decision for the new millennium.'' Mr. Sippel was even able to take issue with that, as he suggested that partnerships and networks are an alternative, and potentially better, way forward in an age and an industry where size matters.

Earlier in the day, two of Bermuda's top insurance mavens, Robert Mulderig, chairman of MRM, and Michael Butt, a director of XL Capital, had been seated on a panel which looked at the state of the insurance and financial services industry in the year 2005, in the company of Weston Hicks, managing director of J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. It was the general consensus that proposed changes in US legislation and the existing move to convergence would result in a reduction in the number of major companies in the financial services field, but again, Mr. Sippel found a way to argue that slightly differently.

His view of a "networked future of partnerships'' led him to forecast a world in which associated groups of companies -- much like the model in use at Bermuda's largest international company, ACE Ltd. -- consolidated economic strength in the group, rather than the individual companies.

"I doubt that, as we have heard, we will have only 15 global financial services companies in the future,'' Mr. Sippel said. "But I do think it is likely that there will be 15 brands.''