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Lloyd's of London's central body will change under new plans, says exec

Lloyd's of London's central governing body, the Corporation of Lloyd's, will change to deliver the 330-year-old insurance market's new modernization plan, according to one of its top executives.

Speaking at the launch of the first blueprint for the Future at Lloyd's strategy, Jon Hancock, the market's performance management director, said that in addition to "all the good stuff we do today," such as maintaining the market's global network of licenses and monitoring the performance of the syndicates that trade there, the Corporation would deliver services to make Lloyd's a digital marketplace.

Hancock said this included "setting and maintaining consistent data standards" and "controlling and influencing the technology we use." He also said the Corporation's work would include modernizing the market's physical working spaces and "adopting agile ways of working."

To do this, he added, the Corporation would need to develop new capabilities. "We will upskill our own people and bring in new people with new skills," he said.

The hard part

In the first blueprint for its future, Lloyd's unveiled how it would implement six initiatives: A complex risks platform; an exchange for less complex risks; improved access for new forms of capital; a "Syndicate-in-a-Box" initiative to make it easier for new companies to enter Lloyd's; a new claims service; and a central pool of services open to all market participants.

The six initiatives were first revealed when Lloyd's published its 2018 earnings in March, and fleshed out May 1 when it opened a market-wide consultation.

The initiatives will be developed in three stages. The first will run throughout 2020, the second throughout 2021 and the third from January 2022 onward. Lloyd's says it will reach milestones in each stage. For example, it will aim to launch its first insurance-linked securities transaction in 2020 as part of phase one of its new capital solution.

Lloyd's plans to publish further blueprints at least once a year in the middle of the year "to inform market participants' own strategy and business planning," according to the first blueprint.

With the plans now laid out, executives at Lloyd's acknowledged that delivering on them would not be easy. Bruce Carnegie-Brown, chairman of Lloyd's, said at the blueprint launch: "Now, as we move from design to executing the plan, the hard work really begins."

Lloyd's CEO John Neal said at the event: "If it was easy, it would have been done already. Many great strategies have fallen down, not on ideas, but on execution."

He added that there would be "some huge benefits" on offer from unraveling the "rather unwieldy spaghetti" of processes, systems and standards that had built up in Lloyd's over the years, "but only if we adopt a careful and planned approach."

Beyond the blueprint

Neal also said delivering the blueprint was just one of three priorities for Lloyd's, and that managing and overseeing the performance of the syndicates that operate in the Lloyd's market "will remain our overarching focus." He noted that with the first blueprint delivered, Hancock would now be "back to the day job of leading the charge" at the Lloyd's performance management directorate.

The other priority is creating a market culture that "attracts and retains the brightest and best talent in our industry." Last week, Lloyd's published the results of its culture survey, launched in response to allegations of widespread sexual misconduct in Lloyd's, which found that 8% of the 6,003 respondents had witnessed sexual harassment over the past 12 months.

Neal said Lloyd's had been "robust" in its actions to "stamp out any form of inappropriate behavior" and that this, coupled with the determination of the marketplace's leaders "will allow everyone to fulfill their potential and feel respected and valued."