It's a dog's life for Richard Brindle, Lancashire Holdings Ltd.'s top boss.

For the executive director, chief executive officer and chairman of the Group underwriting committee, who balances his time between the company's headquarters in Bermuda and its subsidiary office in London, readily admits that his black Labrador Pompey changed his life.

And when Mr. Brindle is working at Lancashire's offices on the sixth floor of Mintflower Place in the absence of Pompey, who is not allowed to travel, there is nothing Mr. Brindle enjoys better than taking his staff members' dogs out for a walk, as he revealed in an exclusive interview with The Royal Gazette.

"My dog changed my life," he said. "After all, I met my wife through him effectively.

"All in all, I am pretty daft about him and he comes into my office every day.

"I think it is also good for morale to have him around - in meetings he will have a good woof at brokers and sometimes there is an unpleasant sound of wind being passed and the room has to be quickly evacuated, but that is only if something has disagreed with him."

Mr. Brindle said that Pompey is no stranger to fame, often getting special requests from his US clients to appear alongside his owner at meetings, while the gentle-natured Labrador has also been in big demand from the media, having made appearances in UK newspapers The Times and the Financial Times, as well as in Lancashire's publications and on the company's website.

Three years ago Mr. Brindle was invited to Lancashire's initial public offering at Merrill Lynch, but said he would only go if Pompey could come along too. After getting over a health and safety issue prohibiting dogs to enter the building, the latter arrived in style with Mr. and Mrs. Brindle in tow and was given the five-star treatment by the welcoming committee, while his owners looked on in amazement.

But Pompey really came into his own at a charity fundraiser held at Mr. Brindle's house in London. His wife Katie, who is an opera singer, was performing at the event and when she went to sit down on the sofa for a break, Pompey came over and started sniffing her. The connection was made instantly. The rest, as they say, is history. The couple took Pompey and Mrs. Brindle's Shih Tzu dog Sagna for a walk at Hyde Park on their first date.

Attracting female interest seems to be something that runs in the canine family, not least with Sebastian, whose owner Ana Parkin, an accountant at Lancashire, brings into work. Mr. Brindle takes Sebastian for walks once or twice a day and got stopped by no fewer than four women the other day, who dotted over the friendly Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

"All dogs are welcome here and staff are encouraged to bring them into work," said Mr. Brindle.

Turning to business, Mr. Brindle said 2008 had been an unprecedented year for the insurance industry as a whole, particularly on the investment side for re/insurers, while Lancashire had weathered the losses from Hurricane Ike reasonably well.

But he reckons a lack of the ability to raise money would result in an increasingly harder insurance market for 2009 and beyond - the opposite of what happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the industry was awash with capital and Lancashire set up on the Island in 2005. "I think there will be fewer players, less capital and a reasonably steady demand," he said. "And a steady demand and reduced supply means higher prices."

Mr. Brindle said the most important part of Lancashire's culture was the fact that all of the employees were shareholders, with everyone being rewarded for their hard efforts, while the company also has a foundation which raises money for good causes in Bermuda and across the world, donating a large amount to charity compared to the size of the firm.

"We try and keep it reasonably humble - we do not fly first class and we try to reduce our expenses wherever possible," he said.

"The whole culture of greed and excess has gone horribly wrong and we like to feel we have not bought into it in the first place, so we have not so far to fall."

And his outlook for Bermuda's insurance industry is good too, believing that the country may be set for a couple of hard years, with job losses in the short-term, but he thinks it will pull out of it at the other end.

"It is like everywhere in the world - Bermuda has to brace itself for a couple of miserable years, but it may make people more humble and think about others suffering in the developing world," he said.

"Even when you do well, you should not be smug about it - you should just be happy to just have a job."