Lloyd’s celebrates a century of risks
On August 18, 1911 the 1911 Lloyd’s Act (PDF) was enacted, effectively broadening the insurer from specializing in marine risks to other forms of risk.
In the same year, Lloyd’s wrote the first ever aviation policy, just four years after its first US Motor Policy.
The 1911 Lloyd’s Act “made the range of business Lloyd’s does today – from property to aviation, casualty to energy – possible,” said the insurer on its website.
“1911 signalled a return to our roots in Edward Lloyd’s 17th century coffee house. The merchants who gathered there may have concentrated on marine, but they weren’t averse to covering other issues from fire insurance, death by gin drinking and even, it is reputed, female chastity [source: Peter L Bernstein’s Against the Gods: the remarkable story of risk].”
Led by “luminary and legend” Cuthbert Heath, Lloyd’s saw non-marine business grow and thrive. (In 2010, marine accounted for just 7 percent of the gross premium written by the market.) Heath, said Lloyd’s, was a man of firsts.
“The first Lloyd’s man to underwrite jewellers’ block, smallpox and burglary, he also reinvented reinsurance for the whole market.”
The diversification of risk led to “phenomenal” growth rates, said Lloyd’s. In 1913, there were 631 underwriting members of Lloyd’s. Just over 40 years later, in 1956, there were 4,177.
Lloyd’s class breakdown by region / www.lloyds.com
