It's a great privilege to have a ringside seat when something exciting is happening in the industry.
With its great communications, advantageous time zone, prime dollar-based onshore location and international business focus, Miami has always been a great place from which to organise Latin American trade and finance.
But its emergence as a significant (re)insurance hub is only relatively recent. These are exciting times for the South Florida metropolis.
Some of those that have been located in Miami since the early 1990s would scoff at the suggestion that it is in the early stages of development, but in global terms it is refreshingly new.
The market lacks the incumbent structures of a long-established international insurance trading centre like London. But this might be its trump card. As long as tough money-laundering rules are adhered to, the local regulator appears unconcerned about the conduct of international business here - or more likely, it is still unaware of its existence.
London underwriters - used to a conduct and a prudential regulator, plus Lloyd's and a stifling alphabet soup of formal and informal committees, associations and governing bodies - will feel exhilarated by the liberating absence of (re)insurance officialdom.
Even the Miami Reinsurance week around which we organised this roundtable is a breath of fresh air compared to the more regimented and structured autumnal gatherings in the US, Europe and Asia.
Here the approach is Darwinian, if ever so slightly haphazard. The vibrant get-together of February's Reinsurance week has managed to grow out of an Odyssey Re golf tournament and flourish over a 10-year period without the need for anything approaching a formal organising committee.
The final secret ingredient is unspoken and cultural.
Miami is a town that is bilingual but feels far more comfortable when first addressing its guests in Spanish rather than in English.
The local joke is that Miami is a bit of Latin America that is conveniently located "within 20 miles of the US".
The ease with which well-educated local Hispanophile and ex-pat talent can be recruited is another massive advantage when seeking to service a vast area containing one-and-a-half continents of Hispanic clientele.
There can surely be no coincidence that the (re)insurance cluster up and down Brickell Avenue seems to grow denser by the year.
Markets are not created but form naturally because they are needed. Latin American (re)insurance likes and needs Miami and wants to support it. One day the city of Miami will also discover that it needs Latin American (re)insurance and then the deal will be fully cemented.
After that the lawmakers, rulemakers, regulators and trade bodies will all doubtless come running, but for now Aidan Pope of Guy Carpenter describes Miami's development as being "at the coffee shop stage".
This coffee shop has a burgeoning syndicated market that can bring meaningful limits to clients and service their business in their own language. It paid hundreds of millions of dollars of 2010 Chilean quake claims without major incident.
Regional hubs based around a shared cultural affinity are here to stay and anyone serious about Latin America in the long term should eventually invest in a Miami presence.
Please click here to view The Insurance Insider Miami Roundtable 2016.
Mark Geoghegan
Editor-in-chief
The Insurance Insider
PS Many thanks to Pro for their support. This support went far beyond the mere financial. Indeed Pro's CEO Artur Niemczewski was the first person to let us know about this extraordinary annual gathering in Miami and his organisation should also take much of the credit for recruiting some of the senior attendees at this excellent event. Roll on 2017.