the inaugural Bermuda Insurance Symposium, which is due to be held from May 25-28 at Marriott's Castle Harbour hotel.

Organisers, operating on a first come-first served basis, can accommodate up to 700 people at the event and are confidently expecting at least 350 attendees.

They have lined up an impressive list of guest speakers in a bid to show off Bermuda's role as the world's leader in Alternative Risk Transfer insurance.

Taking a phrase coined by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Mr. Jonathan Crawley, who sits on the organising committee, said yesterday the Bermuda Symposium would be the "mother and father'' of insurance conferences.

"Unlike those words of Saddam, mine will not turn out to be hot air,'' Mr.

Crawley assured guests at a Bermuda Insurance Institute lunch.

Mr. Crawley, president of Sphere Drake Underwriting Management, said the local industry was going all out to put on a show for the rest of the international insurance world.

As well as specialist speakers from some of the world's top organisations, the organising committee has also signed up former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theisman to provide some light-hearted relief.

Local speakers include Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan, Finance Minister the Hon. David Saul and business heads Mr. Steven Gluckstern, Mr. Brian Hall, Mr.

Robert Mulderig, Mr. Robin Spencer-Arscott and Mr. David Ezekiel.

Overseas speakers will include Mr. Anthony Benson, of Guinness, Plc; Mr.

William Mather, of The Gillette Co.; Ms Kathryn McIntyre, of Business Insurance; Mr. Patrick Ryan, of Aon Corporation and Mr. Stephen Wilder, of The Walt Disney Company.

"From our very first meeting, we on the committee determined that this was going to be a symposium with a difference,'' said Mr. Crawley.

"We determined that it was going to be talked about both before its advent and after it has taken place.

"That it was going to be controversial, that it was going to feature speakers of exceptional quality and fame, that it was going to be competitively priced and that it was going to be fun.

"We determined that it was going to set a standard for future insurance symposiums around the world which it would be hard to match: in short that it was going to be a stunning success.'' The theme for the symposium will be `Bermuda -- the Alternative Risk Transfer Capital of the World'.

Said Mr. Crawley: "The ART market is today about a $52 billion premium market being, as it is, about 32 percent of the total US property and casualty market totalling $167 billion.'' "Included in the ART market are captive companies, of which Bermuda is home to about 50 percent of the world's total; rent-a-captives, of which Bermuda is home to over 80 percent of the world's total; and the large capacity facilities of OIL, TOPS, ACE, EXEL and CODA, which are all based in Bermuda.

"Also included are risk retention groups, in whose management Bermuda directly plays no role, and self-insuring funding mechanisms, in which Bermuda directly plays no role.'' Financial reinsurers and policyholder-owned mutuals or captives, such as RAIL and SCOOL, were also encompassed in the ART market, said Mr. Crawley.

The Symposium will be split up into eight sessions: Risk Managers -- Financing the Working Layer; Insuring Catastrophic Losses; Captive Innovations: Corporate Structures and Reinsurance Positions; Fronting -- Is it a Dirty Word?; The Rent-a-Captive Solution: Why Own When You Can Rent? Alternative Dispute Resolution in the ART Market; Financial Reinsurance -- Is it ART or Forgery? and How will the ART Market Respond to the Problems of the 21st Century? The organisers have adopted Business Insurance magazine, which is one of the world's leading insurance publications, as the official publication of the event.

Twenty-five thousand promotional brochures are going out as an insert to Business Insurance subscribers in the magazine's February 15 issue.

Another 7,000 brochures will be going out to the subscribers of the Bermuda Update and a further 3,000 will be available for people in the local insurance industry to hand out to whomever they wish.

"We are expecting a really strong turn-out,'' said Mr. Crawley. "The committee is hoping for not less than 350 attendees.''