The London market eco-system is a concentration of intellectual and financial capital that works with clients to help enable their businesses to thrive. It handles all types of business from marine risks that have been placed in London for 330 years to more recent risks such as cyber, where London has developed a 28% global market share.

With $91bn of premium written, London is the largest commercial insurance market in the world, larger than Bermuda, Switzerland and Singapore combined. This means it can offer protection for some of the world's largest risks. It underwrites the largest marine reinsurance contract - protecting 90% of the world's shipping fleet from liability risks. London covers some of the world's tallest buildings and more than half of the top 50 architectural and engineering design firms in the USA are insured in London.

London is a true subscription market, a single centre with 350 firms and 52,000 interconnected risk professionals within a quarter of a mile of each other. This unique eco-system delivers keen competition, empowered underwriters and an appetite for risk and a capacity to accept it that is second to none.

Partnering with North American businesses

The London market has helped US and Canadian businesses and individuals to manage the risks they face for well over a century. It is the largest non-US writer of excess and surplus lines business and the largest writer by premium of Property & Casualty business in Canada.

From the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 to 9/11, the Fort McMurray wildfires and the floods and hurricanes in 2017 – London market insurers and brokers work with North American risks every day. Around 30% of all risks written in London are located in North America. London takes a partnership approach to client relationships which delivers a long-term approach to risk assessment.

Delivering on our claims promise

In exceptional catastrophe years like 2017, London’s unrivalled volume, security and flexibility of capital gives it the resilience to take on and pay out on larger scale risks. The London market has a global reputation for delivering on its claims promise - paying over $100 million every day. In 2018 a faster, more efficient authorisation of non-complex payments up to £250,000 was launched to help get clients back on their feet faster.

Making the market more accessible

The complex nature of large commercial risks means that the London market has developed a sophisticated distribution model based on intermediaries along the value chain. London is alive to the need to increase the effective use of technology to make it more accessible to the full advantage of its many stakeholders and especially its policyholders. In the last three years, it has introduced a series of initiatives aimed at moving risks, funds and data more efficiently between brokers and underwriters in order to provide a better service to clients.

Coverholders are a vital link in the chain for the London market. Around 40% of delegated authority business in London comes from the US and Canada. Coverholders combine the best of both worlds: the capacity and the expertise of the delegating insurer with the benefits of local knowledge, underwriting authority and claims payment. The market has worked to streamline processes for coverholders in terms of audits and compliance, and last year the number of required coverholder audits was reduced by 30%. One major US coverholder has gone from 50 annual audits two years ago, to just two in 2017. They have said of the service; “This underscores the value of this streamlined audit service, making it easier to do business in the Lloyd’s and London market.”

Helping buyers face new risks

The unrivalled breadth of expertise means that London can insure the widest range of risk, from the smallest to the largest and from the most standard to the most specialist and complex. Its appetite for challenge and track record in leading new product development is well known. The London market now accounts for 28% of global cyber insurance premiums, and is at the forefront of enabling the sharing economy through the use of specifically desgined insurance policies. London has been protecting the world's ships for three centuries and still insures 33% of the global marine market. But it is not resting on its reputation. The London market created one of the first blockchain platforms to provide marine insurance, improving transparency and reducing costs.

Chris Beazley, CEO London Market Group

About the London Market Group (LMG): The LMG is a market-wide body, bringing together the specialist commercial (re)insurance broking and underwriting communities in London. It is supported by the International Underwriting Association of London (IUA), Lloyd’s of London, the Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA) and the London & International Insurance Brokers’ Association (LIIBA). It speaks collectively for market practitioners on growth and modernisation issues, and its aim is to build on London’s position and reputation as the global centre of insurance excellence.