Two Bermudian graduates are to get the chance to train in London with a major insurance firm as part of a new internship programme.

The training scheme was launched by Lancashire Holdings after a meeting with Home Affairs Minister Michael Fahy earlier this year.

Elaine Whelan, the head of Lancashire’s Bermuda office, said the London-based group chairman Martin Thomas had met the Minister and he had expressed concern about high youth unemployment and problems newly-qualified Bermudians had in getting their foot on the ladder in the insurance and reinsurance industry.

Ms Whelan added: “I chatted with out chairman on the way back to the office and we agreed that Lancashire could help by creating an internship via our charitable foundation that would train graduates and provide them with the skills they would need to gain entry to the reinsurance sector in Bermuda.

“So the Lancashire Foundation graduate development programme was born and we hope it will be successful.”

The Lancashire Foundation will sponsor two graduates to work in Lancashire’s London office for two years, where they will learn underwriting to equip them with the skills they will need to enter the sector when they return home.

Ms Whelan said: “Assuming all goes according to plan, the programme will be repeated and ideally become a permanent programme for the ongoing benefit of Bermudian students.”

Mr Thomas added: “Everyone finds it easier to learn about the sector through insurance, before trying to tackle reinsurance. So in a way there is an embedded, and wholly unintended, barrier to entry in Bermuda’s job market.

“That is what we hope Lancashire Foundation’s graduate development programme will address.”