On this day eighteen years ago, in the wake of the heroic Reconstruction & Renewal project that saved Lloyd’s from financial collapse, the Lloyd’s Market Association was born. The LMA was incorporated on 28 June, 2001.
Merged under the LMA banner to form a united representative body were long-established underwriting associations representing the mariners (the Lloyd’s Underwriting Association, or LUA), the non-marine market (the NMA), and the aviators (the LAUA), the Lloyd’s Underwriting Agents Association (the LUAA) plus the Lloyd's Corporate Capital Association (the LCCA, a relatively new body representing corporate managing agents). The Lloyd’s Motor Underwriters Association (LMUA) came on Board in 2005.
According to the LMA’s official launch press release, the organisation was created to provide a more effective voice and closer market collaboration for underwriting interests in the Lloyd’s market.
“The market was undergoing a sea change,” says Gary Budinger, the LMA’s first Secretary and now its Senior Executive, Finance and Risk. “The often referred to one-man-band underwriting agency was beginning to disappear, and new, larger, corporate entities were evolving. The LMA would represent their interests more effectively, and also achieve cost efficiencies.”
Budinger remembers that the incumbent Association chiefs were reluctant to put their head above the parapet as the operational force behind the new business. Instead, he was chosen by the two market grandees behind the project – Stephen Catlin and Robert Hiscox – to take the initiative forward. “I was junior, so I was no threat,” he recalls with a modest smile. “Robert worked behind the scenes initially doing the arm-twisting, with Stephen then coming to the fore. It is fair to say that the older established marine and aviation associations took some initial encouragement to come together!”
Catlin led the new LMA as its Chairman, supported by a board comprising a who’s who of the leading market figures of the day. The Association proffered the “opportunity to build the most influential trade association in the history of Lloyd’s,” early proponents declared.
The smaller predecessor associations, some with only two or three employees, combined within a single working space on the tenth floor of the still-new Lloyd’s building. They soon welcomed a new leader, Chief Executive Simon Sperryn, who was brought in to oversee the combination of the sometimes rivalrous entities. Sperryn’s background in change management for local government bodies proved effective, and he stayed in post until David Gittings joined as the LMA’s second CEO in 2006.
Eighteen years later the LMA is the leading representative force in the Lloyd’s market, just as its founders intended. It works to enable the success member managing agencies and the market through technical expertise, learning & development activity, and exercising influence to drive market consensus.
Happy Birthday LMA!
Published 28 June 2019