The floor at Lloyd’s of London
(Picture: Lloyd’s of London)The chairman of Lloyd’s of London today insisted the insurance marketplace is making progress cleaning up its sexist culture as it reported its strongest results in seven years.
Bruce Carnegie-Brown said Lloyd’s remained “absolutely four-square behind” efforts to clean up the market’s culture after widespread bullying and harassment was uncovered in 2019. A survey at the time found 8% of respondents had either witnessed or been the victim of sexual harassment.
Lloyd’s launched an improvement plan in response, including a whistleblowing hotline and targets around diversity and inclusion.
That led to the largest ever fine in its 336-year-history last week. Underwriting syndicate Atrium was fined £1 million for historic bullying and harassment partly linked to an annual “boys’ night out.”
Carnegie-Brown said: “We continue to crackdown on bad behaviour. The important thing is we are taking action.
“The market is becoming more diverse and inclusive.”
Carnegie-Brown said he was not aware of any similar ongoing investigation but said: “We probably have a more entrenched history in this area so we’ve got some more work to do.”
The comments came as Lloyd’s reported a return to profit last year. The 151-year-old organisation made £2.3 billion in 2021, compared to a £900 million loss in 2020. Its combined ratio - a measure of profitability that looks at claim outgoings versus income from new premiums - was 93.5%. Lloyd’s said it was the best performance in seven years.
Carnegie-Brown said the profit was “hard earned”, the result of a years-long effort to push money towards better performing underwriting syndicates and away from poorer performers. A digitisation push for the paper-based market has also helped.
Lloyd’s is bracing for a “significant” jump in claims linked to the war in Ukraine but Carnegie-Brown said it was “much too early” to estimate the size of likely payouts.
Underwriting in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus currently represents less than 1% of Lloyd’s global footprint but Carnegie-Brown said the market was likely to be hit by “second order” claims, such as for planes stuck in Russia, missed grain exports or disruption to fuel supplies.
He said all claims were likely to be “within the manageable capacity” of the market.
Carnegie-Brown is more concerned about rising inflation.
“Most people are just behind the curve on inflation,” he said. “You put your price out today and then people claim in six or nine months time.”
Delayed claims mean higher costs when they do land as prices spiral, making it more challenging to price correctly and increasing the risk of losses.
Inflation hit a fresh 30-year high of 6.2% in February, official data out yesterday showed, the the Office for Budget Responsibility expects it to peak above 8% later this year.
