Marine mutual insurer The Standard Club will stop underwriting at Lloyd's of London from Jan. 1, 2019.

Lloyd's Syndicate - 1884 (Charles Taylor Managing Agency Ltd.), backed by the Standard Club and managed by Charles Taylor PLC unit Charles Taylor Managing Agency, will go into runoff from that date. Charles Taylor Managing Agency intends to handle the runoff.

Syndicate 1884 was set up in 2015 to underwrite marine and energy risks. The Standard Club said overcapacity and a weak pricing environment "have made Lloyd's a challenging environment for it to develop a profitable underwriting business with sufficient scale."

It described the syndicate as "one strand" of its strategy to provide members with a wider range of coverage options and added that it was exploring alternatives, including establishing an underwriting agency.

Charles Taylor said that it believes there will be increased demand for both live and runoff syndicate management in Lloyd's.

The news closely follows the announcement of a planned merger between The Standard Club and fellow marine mutual The Strike Club, both of which are managed by companies in the Charles Taylor group.