Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the LMA’s annual CEO lunch.
This is my first lunch as CEO of the LMA and it was an honour to take over the reins from David Gittings at the beginning of this year.
A large part of the reason I took on this role is because I am utterly passionate about the Lloyd’s marketplace. The role of the LMA is to enable a Lloyd’s marketplace in which you, our members can succeed – fundamentally we are stronger together. We seek to achieve this in many different ways – be that through the fantastic educational programmes run by our Academy or by the dozens of technical model wordings we issue each year or through our the behind the scenes lobbying work.
One of the most important roles though is representing the needs and wants of the managing agent community into Lloyd’s. As John Neal noted in his recent speech, the Lloyd’s marketplace should be “leading the flotilla for others to follow, not sailing in the wake of our peers trying to catch up”.
At the LMA, we want to seize this leadership initiative with a focus on five key areas:
Firstly, we want to continue the necessary work started by Jon Hancock’s team on instilling disciplined underwriting across the market. This work focuses on delivering a sustainable Lloyd’s marketplace for all of its participants and we are working with Jon to support him in this endeavour.
Secondly, we will push an agenda that seeks to drench our processes in technological solvent. This does not mean coming up with a magical new all singing, all dancing, expensive system that makes your coffee in the morning and brushes your hair, but instead we will work with the market to use today’s technologies and investments to deliver incremental change to our manual processes, and turn them into digital ones.
Thirdly, we are working with Lloyd’s on the future of the marketplace, and in particular exploring opportunities for differentiated lead/follow models and methods of enhancing the consortia model, which will ultimately benefit the end customer.
Fourthly, Brexit is also very high on all of our agendas. Led by our legal and compliance director, Kees van der Klugt, there has been enormous amounts of work around ensuring continuity for clients - not just for newly incepting contracts but also for our ability to pay claims on legacy contracts in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Fifthly and finally, we are working with both the LMG and Lloyd’s on bringing a customer lens to all that we do. In an FT article a few weeks ago, our Chairman Andrew Brooks spoke about refocusing on the North American market. We recognise that there is work to be done around resetting perceptions of the Lloyd’s marketplace, following on from the unfairly negative press headlines late last year. This is an area in which we will continue to work closely with Lloyd’s.
These five priorities are all vitally important to ensuring we make the Lloyd’s market a better place for you, our members. At the LMA, we achieve this goal through our people, all of whom are as committed and passionate about the Lloyd’s marketplace as I am.
Finally, I would like to thank you all for being here today. I truly believe that the Lloyd’s marketplace has turned the page and is setting itself up for success through a new unity of consensus. Its confidence is returning and it is ready to once again lead the flotilla for others to follow. It is the responsibility of the LMA and all of us here today as captains of the ships in that flotilla to seize this opportunity and to work together to ensure the Lloyd’s marketplace is around for another 300 years to come.
Thank you.