London-based insurance and reinsurance broker RFIB Holdings Ltd. has opened a new operating unit in Bermuda.

Headed by chief executive officer Nigel Clark, a veteran of the Island's insurance industry, RFIB Bermuda Ltd. is keen to make its mark in one of the world's leading insurance markets, through its new office at 61 Front Street.

RFIB Group chief executive Patrick Holcroft said: "The Bermuda market is too big for a broker like us not to be involved here."

The group employs some 300 people in London and placed around £400 million ($660 million) in premium last year. Its major lines include marine, non-marine reinsurance and insurance, and its North American chiefly excess and surplus lines business.

Mr. Holcroft said the brokerage was growing and expanding internationally and had four representative offices, in Tokyo, Moscow, Kiev and Dubai. The Bermuda office is different in that it will write business.

Bermuda is ideal for helping the broker expand its North American footprint, Mr. Holcroft added, but RFIB is hoping to help clients on the Island to broaden their geographical variety of business.

"For many Bermuda companies, non-US business is more difficult for them to get, but we can help them do that," Mr. Clark said.

"The bigger brokers here — Aon Benfield, Marsh, Guy Carpenter and Willis — are more focused on one particular geographical area. We are smaller and focused on being more international and more nimble. We are a good size for this market."

For now Mr. Clark will run the business himself, but, depending on how the coming months pan out, RFIB Bermuda hopes to be able to expand to a staff of three or four by the end of the year.

RFIB Bermuda is off to a solid start in that Mr. Clark, recruited from rival broker Carvill (Bermuda) Ltd., has brought with him a major client in the form of Oil Casualty Insurance Ltd. (OCIL).

Mr. Holcroft said the company was well-financed and about 38 percent owned by Fleming Family and Partners. RFIB, which was founded in 1980, was originally owned by the Robert Fleming & Co. Bank. "We have the financial capability to drive the business," he added. Nick Foden-Pattinson is a director of RFIB Bermuda and is also the director of the group's specialty division — an area in which RFIB hopes to create some deal flow in the Bermuda market.

Mr. Holcroft said he had no doubts over Bermuda's future as a major insurance centre, despite the rhetoric that has been hurled by world leaders at offshore financial centres in recent months.

"The driver for us is not the tax position, but for our clients it's clearly an issue," Mr. Holcroft said.

"What happens here will depend heavily on what the American government decides to do. There has been a lot of rhetoric, but in my experience these things have a habit of seeming much worse than they end up being.

"I doubt that America will want to damage what's going on here."

The insurance industry had, as a whole, had come out of the financial crisis in better shape than most of the rest of the financial services industry, though there had been a few exceptions, Mr. Holcroft said.

"Rates in some areas have hardened," he added. "But with the destruction of so much capital, one would have thought that rates would have hardened much more than they have."