Organization
ActiveLloyd's
London · Since c. 1688
Still an insurance market. It is a society of underwriters, not a single insurance company.
Edward Lloyd kept a coffee house on Tower Street in the late 1680s where ship captains and merchants met, and where a list of ship arrivals was worth paying for. The underwriters who sat there were individuals, each accepting a share of a risk and signing his name under the wording of the policy. That signature is the origin of the term.
Lloyd's is still that market. It is not an insurance company. It is a society, incorporated by the Lloyd's Act of 1871, through which members and, later, corporate capital insure risks other people bring them.
A profession built in a room
The broker walked the room and placed a risk in slips, a line at a time, until the sum was covered. The underwriter judged ships, captains, and routes. Lloyd's List and the Register made the information a trade of its own. The work was conversation plus a signature, which is why it could not be moved into a factory and why it produced a distinctive kind of clerk, the one who checked that every line on a slip was a person who could pay.
Still open
The twentieth century nearly ended it. Asbestos claims, and underwriters who had taken risks they did not understand, produced losses that individual members could not meet. Lloyd's admitted corporate capital, limited liability, and a franchise board that can exclude a syndicate. The room is now a building on Lime Street. The structure is still a market of many balance sheets, not one. That is why the catalogue lists it as an organization.
The work it organized
- Underwriter
- Broker
- Loss adjuster
- Intelligence clerk
On the timeline
Related
- The Bank of EnglandActive