Businesses can boost their public profiles thanks to two former Bermuda-based journalists who have set up a new communications company offering specialist writing and public relations consultancy services to the reinsurance and risk management sectors.

Rein4ce will use reinsurance writers and production journalists in the UK and Bermuda to provide a range of copywriting services and PR support.

The company's founders are former The Royal Gazette business reporter, Mairi Mallon, and journalist and public relations consultant, Stephen Breen, who formerly worked on The Gazette as a news reporter.

Following extensive market research, the company believes there is a strong, unmet, demand from reinsurance companies – and the businesses that service them – for professionals who can not only deliver well-written corporate literature, but who also have a strong understanding of the sector and extensive industry contacts.

"Reinsurance is a very specialised subject, and what we constantly hear from reinsurance executives and their marketing and PR departments is that they have to waste a lot of time explaining the basics of what they do when they talk to copywriters and PR agencies," said rein4ce managing director Ms Mallon.

"When it comes to corporate communications, we are convinced that there is a big demand for rein4ce's unique combination of great writing, industry know-how and contacts."

Rein4ce is offering a range of services including copywriting, web writing, speech-writing, ghost-writing articles, generating story ideas, and public relations consultancy services. The company is also offering complete media start-up packages for new reinsurance companies that include logo and brochure design through to web writing and an initial press release.

The services will be aimed at a wide range of professionals within the reinsurance, insurance and risk management industries and businesses that service them, including PR and marketing departments, brokers, underwriters, associated professionals such as lawyers, bankers, accountants, captive managers, professional associations and overseas jurisdictions.

Ms Mallon and Mr. Breen said they were delighted to have the business up and running before travelling earlier this month to the Rendez-vous in Monte Carlo – the annual networking event of the world's leading reinsurance professionals.

"We received a really positive feedback from people we spoke to in Monte Carlo," said Ms Mallon. "People really seemed to like the services we are offering and we are optimistic that we will be kept busy. "

Mr. Breen, a former national newspaper reporter who founded his own PR and communications company Breen Media in 2005, believes the credit crunch will present business opportunities for rein4ce.

"Whenever times get tough, the first parts of a business to suffer are normally training, PR and marketing," he said.

"We know that PR and marketing departments will be coming under an awful lot of pressure to keep on producing with reduced resources, and we feel rein4ce is perfectly placed to take the strain if they need to outsource work."

Rein4ce will initially use a network of freelance reinsurance writers and editors, including former Global Reinsurance and Strategic Risk editor, Helen Yates, Bermuda-based contributing editor of the Bermuda Insurance Quarterly, Chris Gibbons, and Lindsey Rogerson, the award-winning former editor of Private Banker International, who writes a monthly investment focus for Global Reinsurance.

For more information visit www.rein4ce.co.uk