A new Bermuda company, WIRE Bermuda Ltd., is providing customised access to the Internet for insurers, reinsurers and brokers.

Said managing director Mr. Rowan Douglas, "There is an enormous volume of underwriting information available on the Internet. It's sitting in other people's computers in academic departments, federal departments and commercial organisations.'' A former Lloyd's underwriter, Mr. Douglas established an opportunity for reinsurance underwriters to have a direct line to information that is useful to their underwriting tasks, through W.I.R.E. (World-wide Intellectual Resources Exchange) UK Ltd. The firm pulls together information from the Internet.

"I set up the company because I was unhappy with the way we did underwriting at Lloyd's. I seemed to be walking backward into the future, to use a cliche.

"I was looking at my claims histories to try to understand what was happening to litigation in the future. I was trying to look at the changes in cost and tried to project them into the future. I thought it was ridiculous and that I should try turning around and walk forward into the future by bringing together experts in medical management, health economics to give me a predictive spin on what was going to happen in the future.

"That was the philosophical idea behind the company and we set it up at the University of Sussex. I was doing it for my firm and then decided to do it for lots of firms.'' He said that his company would identify the experts in a field, when faced with a request for information, and bring their ideas together for the use of the client.

Mr. Douglas said, "There's a lot of information all over the place, and you can spend a lot of time looking for it. What we do for clients is find it all with our full time team and bring it all together on a single, itemised, contents page.'' He said, "There is a strong correlation between the information demands of underwriters and the material available on the Internet. This applies through classes, across property and casualty business including marine, aviation, natural perils, medical malpractice, pollution liability, personal injury and insurance deregulation. Increasingly, this medium becomes the tool for monitoring insurance market news and developments.'' Mr. Douglas said the service was brought to Bermuda for a number of reasons.

They include the fact that underwriting done here is almost more pertinent than that done in London, because of the property catastrophe business here with a US focus.

He said the Internet responds to Bermuda's location. Underwriters here would have the same access as those in North America.

And he said that there is a cluster of professional underwriters here who would rapidly see the benefits, unlike in London, where there can be a gulf between the talent levels of different underwriters.

Mr. Douglas sees Bermuda being used as a hub for an emerging reinsurance information exchange.

Mr. Rowan Douglas