Lloyd’s of London news

Lloyd’s of London, the specialist insurance and reinsurance marketplace, has estimated that the non-life insurance industry faces as much as $107 billion of losses from the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic to the 2020 underwriting year alone.

TigerRisk Partners LLC, the global risk, capital and reinsurance brokerage and advisory, has announced the hiring of experienced London reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market executive Lawrence Po-Ba.

Beazley, the specialist Lloyd’s focused insurance and reinsurance underwriting business, has revealed an expected Covid-19 claims burden of $170 million net of reinsurance across its business. We would expect some of that loss to be shared with investors backing the companies third-party capital arrangements.

Sompo International, the Bermuda headquartered specialty property and casualty insurance and reinsurance provider, is exiting the Lloyd’s market, saying that while it aims for significant growth in London and Europe it feels a consolidated company market platform is the way to go.

While the immediate economic and financial market impacts of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic have ramifications for investor appetite, there are longer-term reasons that ILS funds could face challenges when it comes to accepting new inflows while the virus remains prevalent.

As our sister publication Reinsurance News reported yesterday afternoon, Lloyd’s has asked its members that have been hit by sizeable losses as a result of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic to accelerate capital injections with the goal of stabilising the markets capital position.

Stone Ridge Asset Management, the alternative risk premia focused mutual fund manager that has specific reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) strategies, significantly expanded its allocations of capital to Lloyd’s of London syndicates in 2018 with its investments deployed into business amounting to almost $250 million of gross premiums.

Arcus Syndicate 1856 at Lloyd’s, which is backed by third-party funds under the management of the Credit Suisse Insurance Linked Strategies team, is targeting an expansion of business across most of the underwriting classes it operates in for 2020.

The Lloyd’s of London insurance and reinsurance market fell to an underwriting loss for the third consecutive year, reporting a combined ratio of 102.1% for 2019, while paying gross claims during the year that were higher than in the prior year.

The London market insurance and reinsurance sector is at-risk due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, causing Fitch Ratings to revise its outlook on this core marketplace to negative.