It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. In Bermudian Di Parfitt's case, it takes a husband and a supportive family, as well as her own efforts, to raise her two children. Ms Parfitt was promoted on May 1 from assistant underwriter to underwriter at MS Frontier Reinsurance Ltd., the Bermuda reinsurer that is part of the Japanese insurance giant Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group.

Ms Parfitt's work calls for a significant amount of travel. She and her husband Wayne have two children, a daughter, Ihsan, who is eight years old, and a son, Nuri, who is two.

Neither of Ms Parfitt's parents work in insurance, "but my family sees it as a great opportunity", she said. "My mother does stress about my level of travel. We travel a lot in this business. My husband and my family are pretty understanding" — she breaks into a smile — "and it gives you time to miss each other."

Ms Parfitt went to Saltus, and then spent two years studying to become a lawyer. To make that happen financially, she worked as a bus-girl at nights, part time, and wrote for The Royal Gazette's "Young Observer" section.

Having got married, she had Ihsan, and came to understand that moving to England to complete her law studies would not be a viable plan. "So I realised that I had to choose another career path, and chose reinsurance," Ms Parfitt said.

She opted for reinsurance "because it's law-related" she said. "At my first job, I spent all day reviewing contract wordings, because that's what I knew. Soon after I went into catastrophe modelling and underwriting, and it went from there."

She added: "If I really think about it, my daughter is pretty much the reason I'm in reinsurance, because if I hadn't had her, I probably would have gone to London to pursue the law — but at that time, I realised, it was too much of an uproot to move away."

She later enrolled in the Bermuda Insurance Institute and took her first insurance exam, which she passed with ease. "Catherine Lapsley, director of the Bermuda Foundation for Insurance Studies, helped to set up my first interview, for which I am grateful to this day," Ms Parfitt said, and she worked at RenaissanceRe and Aspen Insurance Holdings before joining MS Frontier Re in October 2006.

"Di interviewed with us, but we weren't able to hire her at that time," recalled Yasunori Araga, president and chief executive officer of MS Frontier Re. "Yet she found the company attractive and came back and talked to us again, which is when we hired her. That tells you something about her determination."

Ms Parfitt underwrites North American treaty business at MS Frontier Re. "I'm responsible for the underwriting, catastrophe modelling and the development of the North American treaty account," she said. Her background is mainly in US property underwriting.

So what does it take to be a successful underwriter?

"I think you have to be inquisitive, you have to like to do research, and you need to have lots of energy, because it's a very on-the-go, multi-tasking type of job," Ms Parfitt said.

"You have to be excellent at math, which is a core subject. You need the ability to understand complicated programmes, which is very important in underwriting, and to carry out the research, as well as the ability to analyse a programme from different angles. Some of it is subjective.

"You can look at a risk and price it, and know what it is worth, but you have to do the remaining analysis to support what your original plan was."

Mr. Araga added: "Underwriters need to understand their own abilities and capabilities. They have to be neither aggressive nor faint-hearted. They must be both determined and flexible."

The assistant underwriter's job includes modelling analysis, and learning about clients and their risk exposures and loss history. To that mix, as an underwriter, "you add decision-making and mentoring and, of course, making a profit, as well as setting up a business strategy", Mr. Araga said.

The key practical difference is that an underwriter has signing authority. The underwriter recommends that the company take on a risk, which at MS Frontier Re is then peer reviewed, that is considered and approved by another underwriter.

"Before you authorise taking on the risk to the broker and say, for example, 'we would like to write 20 percent of $50 million, excess of $50 million', it has to be approved; there has to be another signature for the company," Ms Parfitt explained.

You would expect that when she is not working, Ms Parfitt's time would be filled with looking after her children. Certainly, some of it is.

"Most weekends, I'm with the children," she said, "but when I'm not working, I do quite a lot. There's no real rest time. Being a mother and an underwriter, there has to be a balance. Sometimes it's difficult to achieve, and you have to find time for yourself. When I'm not working, I'm at the movies, or at the playground; we go fishing a lot. I do kick-boxing on the side. I play tennis sometimes."

Parked outside MS Frontier Re's office was a car with a bumper sticker that read: "Every mother is a working woman". Di Parfitt, by that definition, is rather more.