Roving reporter Steve McIntosh files this dispatch from the front lines of the 1st Annual Cayman Islands ILS Summit.

Wow. 

Following a barn-storming speech in which Cayman Islands Premier McKeeva Bush repeatedly derided fellow crown colony Bermuda, Soc Gen MD and Head of Pension Solutions for the Americas, Jeff Mulholland piled on adding “Bermuda has made itself obsolete”.

In a speech that tiptoed perilously close to the line of propriety on more than one occasion, Premier Bush repeatedly and directly invoked the island nation he described as “our friends in the middle of the Atlantic”. At one stage mocking their “preferred” mode of transport, the scooter, at another their recently-downgraded credit rating, it was clear recent comments by his Bermuda counterpart Paula Cox had struck a raw nerve.

Following on directly from Mr. Bush’s opening remarks, Mulholland issued a stinging rebuke of Bermuda’s decision to pursue Solvency II equivalency, not only declaring Bermuda obsolete, but adding “In the advisory work we do right now this is not a controversial statement,” he confirmed, “This is a majority view and a view that has changed over the last year.” He described the decision to “kowtow to the Europeans” by adopting the Solvency II capital requirements for insurance and reinsurance companies as a “gross miscalculation”.

He ended by advising the audience to “buy Cayman real estate”.  Kim Lund must be beaming from ear to ear!

Here’s the article from CNS:

http://cnsbusiness.com/content/ci-winning-insurance-market