Around 450 delegates are expected the Bermuda Captive Conference this week.

Premier Ewart Brown will deliver the opening remarks this morning at the Fairmont Southampton, where the event will run through Thursday.

Among some of the topics set to be debated at the event are the sub-prime crisis, hurricanes and captive formations in Bermuda, while there will also be a "speed-dating" session.

Khim Chia, Bermuda Captive Conference '08 committee member and assistant vice-president of Marsh's Captive Solutions, who has been organising the conference with Jill Husbands, chairman of the committee and managing director of Marsh Captive Solutions, said preparations for the big day had been going well with 400 attendees already signed up and another 50 expected to join them.

"Preparations for the conference have been very smooth and we have a Bermuda Captive Conference committee of members from the industry, including companies such as Marsh, Aon, Willis and JLT Park and even the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), who come together for monthly meetings to organise the event," she said.

"Every year we do this we learn from our experiences of previous events and we put the sessions together with everybody having a role to play. This year we have put the golf day at Tucker's Point Golf Club in the middle of the conference so people can network before the event is finished. Also, we sent out survey forms and questionnaires to people who attended the conference last year and the feedback was that a lot of captive owners come down to Bermuda for their company AGMs around June, so we decided to move the event from September to June to tie in with this."

She said one of the highlights of the conference included a session this morning by Shelby Weldon, director of insurance compliance at the BMA, Jason Carne, partner at KPMG Bermuda, and David Doyle, partner at Conyers Dill & Pearman, Bermuda, on current issues and a regulatory update. The session will focus on changes to the Insurance Act and Companies Act and how those changes impact Bermuda captives.

A theme running throughout the conference will be health care with a number of debates sponsored by ASHRM, who have been involved in the conference since its inception. These sessions include Healthcare Track: Attributes of Excellence — Governance of Non-profit Captive Insurance Companies led by Ellen Barton, an independent health care risk management consultant and a principal of enterprise risk management strategies, Recent Legal and Regulatory Developments Affecting Healthcare Self-Insurance Programmes, and Coverage Check-up — Assessing and Understanding Your Healthcare Captive's Coverage among some of the key sessions.

This year's tax update has been turned into a main session on the final day with Bruce Wright, partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP and Mary Gillmarten, partner at Deloitte & Touche discussing the latest changes and Richard Irvine, partner at PricewaterhouseCooper Bermuda moderating the panel.

Other interesting debates today feature keynote speaker and polar explorer Robert Swan talking about Leadership on the Edge, a "speed-dating" session chaired by Kate Robinson, senior vice-president of Aon Insurance Managers (Bermuda) Ltd., with representatives from Butterfield Bank, the Bank of Bermuda, Barclays Global Investors, Credit Agricole Asset Management (UK) Ltd., Vanguard and Wellington Management.

Thursday's sub-prime crisis session will feature panellists Christopher Rasmussen, executive director of Morgan Stanley, Thomas Kelly, director of insurance practice at KPMG, Yvette Pierre, principal of policy and research assessment at the BMA, Andrew Baron, senior portfolio manager for fixed income at Butterfield Asset Management, and moderated by William Thomas-Ferrand, vice-president of Marsh Captive Solutions.

Today will feature Hurricane Prediction, with a panel of Dr. Anthony Knap, president of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, and Steve Drews, lead meteorologist at Aon Inc. Chicago, and moderated by Philip Barnes, managing director of Aon Insurance Managers (Bermuda) Ltd.

The event finishes with a gala dinner at Fort Hamilton on Thursday evening.