ACE Ltd will fully cooperate with investigations into possible links one of its subsidiaries had with the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And the Bermuda insurance giant will not only go through its archives but also set up a special task force to investigate the matter.

ACE INA was last week mentioned in stories in connection with "slave insurance policies'' and has come under pressure to hand over details of the policies sold 150 years ago.

According to Reuters the move could be the first step towards compulsory hearings to determine if insurance companies should make reparations -- possibly worth millions of dollars -- to black slaves' descendants.

ACE said yesterday it had been approached by a researcher looking for data on the history of slavery with the intention of identifying companies that may have profited from the slave trade.

Brian Duperreault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ACE Ltd, said in a letter to company employees: "ACE will fully cooperate with all responsible efforts to explore these historical antecedents and will fully comply with its legal obligations.'' In July 1999, ACE bought up US insurance giant INA. This company was originally set up in 1792 in Pennsylvania as the Insurance Company of North America.

According to the letter issued by Mr. Duperreault, the state of Pennsylvania, where INA is domiciled, abolished slavery in 1780, 12 years before the founding of INA and 53 years before the United States federal government abolished slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

Mr. Duperreault added in the letter to all ACE staff: "Recently ACE INA received an inquiry from a person researching the history of slavery in the United States with the intention of identifying companies who may have profited from slave holding or trading in the 19th century.

"Since INA was an active insurer in the 18th and 19th centuries, we have agreed to research INA archives for evidence of any historical involvement. We have also agreed to appoint an independent task force consisting of qualified people from several different research disciplines to investigate the matter.'' ACE vows to help probe He added that in addition to Philadelphia-based INA, ACE INA owns the historical franchise for the Aetna Insurance Company of Hartford, which has also been named in connection with the `slave policies'.

Aetna was founded in 1819 and was known as Little Aetna. It formed a life insurance branch in 1850 and in 1853 pun it off as a separate life insurance company to become what today is Aetna Inc. He added: "That company has already responded to this issue.'' The move to investigate various insurance companies came soon after California's Insurance Commissioner threatened to close down some European insurers' operations in the state unless they honoured Nazi-era life insurance policies.

According to research done by authors Charles Blockson and Ron Fry in their 1977 book `Black genealogy' INA issued slave policies.

A new law signed by California Governor Gray Davis at the end of September gives California's Insurance Commissioner, Harry Low, the power to ask all insurers doing business in the state to hand over details of slave policies written in the 1850s and 1860s that paid out money to slave owners rather than the families when a slave died.

Although the practice was not illegal, the law's supporters say immoral profits from slavery should be returned to the salves' descendants. Under a typical policy a slave owner would get a $500 payout from an annual premium of about $11 on an insured slave. The policies disappeared with the abolition of slavery in 1865.

Mr. Duperreault said to end his letter to employees: "No one within the ACE organisation disagrees with the fact that slavery is an abhorrent stain on history. We cannot change the past, only learn from it.'' Mr. Duperreault is currently off the Island, but will be returning for the Bermuda Angels, a meeting of heads of the insurance industry with analysts from around the world.