Bermuda's authorities are very aware of the financial issues they face and have been working hard to address them.

That is the view of financial services Michael Foot, who visited Bermuda this week to carry out an independent investigation of the Island's financial centre.

Mr. Foot, chairman of UK-based Promontory Financial Group, met with key members of Bermuda's Government, including Finance Minister Paula Cox, the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) and the financial services and insurance industry yesterday as part of a UK review of British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories business jurisdictions. Today he will see Premier Ewart Brown and other leaders in the private sector, including lawyers and accountants.

The review was announced by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling in his Pre-Budget Report 2008 and officially unveiled in December last year.

And it has been focusing on regulation, taxation in relation to financial stability, financial crisis management and international co-operation.

"I think, in Bermuda, the authorities are very aware of the kind of issues they face," said Mr. Foot.

"The BMA have done a large amount of work on stress testing of insurance companies and banks and Government has been addressing issues as well.

"The impression is that the private sector is very supportive of Bermuda as a financial centre to do business, which is great thing to have and a good start for Bermuda."

Mr. Foot, who was last in Bermuda 34 years ago, said he and his delegation had found everyone they had spoken to so far very responsive to the work they were doing.

"We have got a very good programme laid on for us," he said.

"People are very keen to talk to us and we are very keen to talk to them.

"Government is clearly interested in what we are doing, all the regulation has a key role to play and in industry we are talking to the people who actually do the heavy-lifting, because if you want to know what are the strengths of a jurisdiction these are the guys that do it every day and many of them have firms in other jurisdictions of a similar type."

Mr. Foot said the main reason behind the review was the UK Treasury's interest in the financial centres because of the benefits and downsides of the jurisdictions to the UK and vice-versa.

He said his job was to better understand the links between the UK and the various jursidictions and to discuss between the respective parties what they each have in common - in Bermuda's case, its dependence on the financial sector, particularly considering its growth in the global market over the past 10 years.

Having started looking at a number of financial centres, including Guernsey, Jersey, Malta, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Turks & Caicos and Anguila, four to five weeks ago, his team has been busy preparing an interim report for April 22 before identifying the key areas of interest and deciding how to discuss them with the public and private sector and carrying out a web-based consultation and then producing a final report with recommendations in the fourth quarter of 2009.