Reinsurance Magazine has just announced the launch of a new event for the Bermuda reinsurance and insurance calendar - the Bermuda Reinsurance Club, to be held on March 17th, 2010.

The half-day event at the Hamilton Princess will be opened by Bermuda's Deputy Premier Paula Cox and will feature three discussions: the first on the New York Stock Exchange and what it will mean to Bermuda and London markets; a look at the Class of 2005 five years on; and panel on the age-old debate on Bermuda vs London and whether the rivalry is still there.

The event takes place on the morning of March 17, the day after the influential World Insurance Forum finishes.

The Bermuda Reinsurance Club event will be chaired by yours truly and Mairi Mallon of Rein4ce.

The panellists include: Barbara Merry, chief executive of Hardy Underwriting, AM Best's Senior Vice President of ratings Matt Mosher, Charles Dupplin, Chief Executive Officer of Hiscox Bermuda, Bradley Kading, president and executive director of the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR) and Neil McConachie President, and Chief Financial Officer of Lancashire Holdings Ltd.

More information and details on how to attend are available here

Special discounts on the delegate fee are also available for members of the PWC Bermuda Reinsurance Club.

Have a good week

Reinsurance Towers are off on mass to Bermuda next week for the World Insurance Forum and our own little Bermuda Reinsurance Club event (see below) - we hope to see many of you there.

As per usual, the radio silence on blog-re over the last couple of weeks mean we have been busy planning something. Not only will we be launching our Club but I will also be out there filming interviews with some of our most loved insurance and reinsurance figures, keep an eye out on our main website for those towards the end of the month.

We have also secured a couple of extra panelists for the Club event including John Daum, the interview subject of our December 2009 issue of Reinsurance, and the ever entertaining Don Kramer.

We still have a few free places left for the half-day event (Wednesday 17th 9am-1pm) so drop me an email to [email protected] if it sounds like your cup of tea and you are not yet registered as if you just turn up on the day we will have to charge you a small registration fee.

Enjoy the rest of your week

The Reinsurance Magazine team will be tweeting from the World Insurance Forum in Bermuda next week

Make sure you follow the Reinsurance team on Twitter at Reinsurance_Mag for all the latest news and gossip at the international insurance conference.

To follow the updates from the team go to www.twitter.com/Reinsurance_Mag

Alex Ferguson wrote in The Weekly:

We at Reinsurance Towers are - as usual - feeling particularly happy with ourselves.

While some of us were busy sunning themselves at the World Insurance Forum and our fabulous new Reinsurance Club social in Bermuda, yours truly decided to brave Orlando, Florida, and the theme parks.

After jumping on more than enough rollercoasters that can be possibly right for one human being (our stomach is only just coming back from being untwisted), Reinsurance Towers has decided on its very own theme park idea, which will be set in the surroundings of Lloyd's of London. Other worlds will be built in New York, Asia and Bermuda, but the builders are currently on strike.

Here are just some of our ideas....

Name This! (Sponsored by Lloyd's of London):

This rollercoaster leads you up into the world of profit, and then suddenly you're in the 'Unlimited Liability' chasm, where you're plunged into worthlessness and poverty before getting spat out into the gutter, where a friendly lawyer will be waiting.

The Losses (Sponsored by God):
Sit in your house as it is shaken by earthquakes, pushed over by hurricanes, whirled by tornadoes, and then half-drowned by floods/

Money, Money, Money (Sponsored by Joe Taxpayer):
Learn how to make other people pay for your mistakes - over and over again.Also can be seen in another attraction - "Wall Street" - which has been going strong until late 2008.

Broking Idol (Sponsored by our friends at WHAM)

Based on the American Idol experience at Disney, but with us, it's more exciting. Representatives from three major broking houses battle it out for the last client on the face of the earth. Watch as they humiliate themselves for nothing. WARNING: This attraction might prove to be a little too-close-to-home for anyone involved in aviation insurance.

Food: The Whine Lodge

You'll sit around for four hours getting filled up with rubbish food for unbelievably high prices, listening to other people at the park jaw-aching behind each other's back. You'll feel like you've never left EC3.

Please Note: We are slightly worried about the staff of the London world, because they say that they can't wait to be a part of the staff, and then they go and work for the competition. And then come back. Repeatedly.

Anyway, we've got to run. It's cocktail hour on Collins Avenue, and we're thirsty.

Tomorrow, another month sees another renewals season begin and as usual competition from the WHAM brokers to see who can have their report out first.

Willis were first out of the gate this month, brining out their report on April renewals before April had even begun and the report was certainly a gloomy read.

According to the report, reinsurers will be picking up most of the tab for the $16bn catastrophes that have hit the world in Q1 - and their results will make for a nervous read - and according to the broker as soon as the reinsurers begin to recover they will be hit by a more-active-than-usual hurricane season.

Added to this Willis Re adds exposure to sovereign debt, less plentiful reserve releases and inadequate pricing to reinsurers' woes.

However, we all know that Willis have been having a hard 18 months with rumors of more redundancies in the air in their UK GI divisions so could all the negativity be a reflection of their current perspective on the insurance world?

Will some reinsurers begin to crumble under pressure as all the negativity in the report could lead some to believe? We at Reinsurance Towers think not but we will certainly be putting Q1 results under a lot of scrutiny this year