In mid-March, Lloyd's of London closed its underwriting room due to the coronavirus outbreak across the UK
Coronavirus outbreak forced Lloyd's of London to close its underwriting room in London. (Credit: phogel from germany/Wikipedia.org)
Lloyd’s of London revealed that it is mulling the prospects of combining its underwriting floor in London with certain online elements.
In mid-March, the insurance marketplace closed its underwriting room in London due to the coronavirus outbreak across the UK. It had also said that it will not reopen the underwriting room before August.
Following the closure of the underwriting floor, that under normal circumstances is buzzing with brokers and underwriters, the insurance marketplace went fully online for the first time, reported Reuters.
In a recently uploaded video on YouTube, Lloyd’s of London chief operations officer Jennifer Rigby said that the market is looking to trial a combination of the best features of the physical underwriting room with a virtual room that can be visited irrespective of one’s location. Jennifer Rigby said that the plan has been accelerated now.
The virtual underwriting plan has been in development and is part of the market’s Future at Lloyd’s programme for transitioning to electronic exchanges. However, Lloyd’s of London previously maintained that the scope for a physical underwriting floor will always be present.
Lloyd’s of London to pay out $3bn-$4.3bn to customers over Covid-19 pandemic
Earlier this month, the (re)insurance market said that it will pay out between $3bn and $4.3bn to its global customers due to the far-reaching effects of Covid-19. The insurance marketplace said that the payout will be on par with the 9/11 terror attack in the US in 2001 and the combined impact of the Harvey, Irma, and Maria hurricanes in 2017, which all resulted in similar payouts by the Lloyd’s of London’s market.
Lloyd’s of London said that it intends to come out with a series of more initiatives in the coming weeks to support the short, medium and long-term response to the Covid-19 while continuing to work with government, industry, and businesses.
One of the initiatives that is being thought about is setting up a ‘Recover Re’ insurance vehicle for offering “after the event” cover for pandemic related business recovery, which will include the prevailing Covid-19 outbreak.