The launch of Saudi Re in Saudi Arabia serves as an anchor for the Kingdom as well as the region's insurance market, giving insurers in the booming Saudi market a local reinsurer with which to do business. A new law requires that local insurers cede 30 percent of their premiums within Saudi Arabia. Saudi Re plans to expand into growing markets in Arab and South Asian countries, and to tap into the growing Takaful market that provides insurance protection based on Islamic principles. The reinsurer is 60 percent owned by three Saudi families and 64 local insurance organizations. The other 40 percent of the company was sold in an initial public offering on the Tadawul - the Saudi stock exchange. With these developments, the Middle East insurance market is on the move, perhaps mirroring the growing prominence of the region's investor class and sovereign wealth funds, which get more of the headlines. The World Insurance Forum's decision to hold its biennial conference in Dubai this year, rather than the usual Bermuda venue, is of particular interest in that since its 1993 launch, the forum served as much to showcase the Bermuda market as to gather industry executives from around the world. Now the Gulf has the spotlight. Dubai, a central economic hub for the United Arab Emirates, has for several years been promoting its brand as a burgeoning financial hub in the region. Dubai, like neighboring Bahrain and Qatar, is in the midst of a construction boom, including what will be the world's tallest building once completed - the Burj Dubai. It shows the potential for financial services in the Gulf that those three countries are in hot competition to draw insurance expertise from around the world to invest in their markets. __
