The interests of Bermuda and Lloyd’s are very much aligned despite often being characterised as a rivalry in the world’s insurance and reinsurance marketplace, attendees at the Bermuda Risk Summit were told today.

Patrick Tiernan, chief of markets at Lloyd’s, said: “We see Bermuda as an integral and highly complementary part of our market, and this is seen in how our syndicates and people interact with the island.”

He said nearly 50 per cent of Lloyd’s syndicates have some sort of presence on the island. Some 20 per cent of Lloyd’s managing agents write business directly from their bases in Bermuda via service companies. And premium written by the Lloyd’s service companies has increased fivefold over the past three years.

Mr Tiernan added that Bermuda is one of his organisation’s most valuable counterparties from a reinsurance perspective as close to a third of the business written in Lloyd’s is ceded back to Bermuda.

He said: “When I think about the future for our two great centres of risk ... it’s to take on the big challenges and face them from a position of strength.”

Mr Tiernan was speaking on the panel “Lloyd’s-Bermuda: A Shared Perspective”, where he was joined by Vince Tizzio, president and CEO of Axis Capital, Kirstin Mitchell-Wallace, director of portfolio risk management at Lloyd’s, and Burkhard Keese, chief financial officer at Lloyd’s.

Mr Tizzio said Axis launched in Bermuda in 2001, and has been at Lloyd’s since 2014.

Syndicate 250, established by Axis to support the energy transition, has received full approval from Lloyd’s and will begin underwriting from April 1.

Mr Tizzio said: “We take the strong view that the marketplaces between Bermuda and Lloyd’s are complementary, and we think that they are both equally important to the journey of Axis and indeed most specialists that compete in the global economy.”

He added: “We are privileged and proud to support both markets.”

Dr Mitchell-Wallace said global claims history shows that losses related to natural catastrophes are increasing and are expected to increase further.

She said most of the increase to date has been driven by more exposure in more hazardous locations.

Dr Mitchell-Wallace said: “The changes that we’ve seen so far are largely without the impact of climate change.

“What does this mean? This means that the worst is yet to come.

“This is going to manifest in the need for more capacity for different perils ... certainly, flood and wildfire are expected to be issues.”

She added: “Globally, as an industry, between Bermuda and London, we need to collaborate with the academic community to help them improve the resolution of the models so that we can get the results that we need to help us manage the risk going forward.”

Dr Mitchell-Wallace said cyber-risk’s various perils, such as ransomware and cloud outage, are very different.

“We need to start recognising this and we need to change the way that we talk about this peril.

“Cyber hasn’t had its ‘Hurricane Andrew’ yet. Hurricane Andrew was a massive catalyst for improvements in exposure management and data collection.

“But what we want to do in cyber is to be prepared. We want to have the foundations in place before we need the roof.

“So we want to start collecting better data, and at Lloyd’s we are working on a cyber aggregation model, developing that, collecting better data and working on a definition of ‘cyber catastrophe’.

“We want to work in partnership with the whole market, including Bermuda.”