Lloyd's of London is the world's best-known specialty-insurance marketplace, descended from gatherings at Edward Lloyd's coffee house in London around 1688. Seafarers and merchants met there to share the financial risk of the hairiest maritime ventures. More than three centuries later, a shipowner wanting to insure a vessel passing through the Strait of Hormuz is still likely to call on its specialists for a quote.
The Lloyd's building in London serves as a meeting place for brokers and underwriting syndicates, which write policies and share risk. This concentration of specialists promotes innovation: the first policies for a car, an aeroplane and a satellite were all written there. More recently Lloyd's has carved out a niche in cyber and energy-infrastructure insurance. It makes up around 40% of the wider London specialty-insurance and reinsurance market, which is worth $187bn and supported 61,000 jobs in 2024.
Lloyd's wrote nearly £60bn ($81bn) of contracts in 2025, doubling in real terms since 2015. Its share of the global specialty-insurance market has risen from 42% to 45% over the past five years. It has also grown its share of the global marine, energy and property insurance markets.
Lloyd's policies were once exclusively backed by capital from wealthy individuals known as "Names". By the 1970s their numbers were swelling rapidly: monied aristocrats were joined by celebrities, politicians and upstart millionaires from the City. Names enjoyed enticing tax breaks and the opportunity for handsome returns, but the catch was unlimited liability for losses. After asbestosis-related claims struck in the 1990s, thousands of Names lost money; many were ruined.
A slicker organisation has since emerged. Much of the capital now comes from insurers rather than landowning dilettantes. Some individuals still invest, but mostly through "NameCos"—companies where liability is sensibly limited.
Property insurance became especially lucrative after a run of disasters beginning with a ruinous hurricane season in 2017 prompted insurers to raise prices. After 2022, catastrophes lightened, helping to make the three years to 2025 the most profitable in more than a decade. In 2025 pre-tax profits across the Lloyd's syndicates were £10.6bn; the ten-year average is £2.5bn. The return on capital exceeded 20%. Prices fell in 2025 for the first time in years as competition returned.
Lloyd's boasts that it has paid out for even the most devastating claims, from the sinking of the Titanic to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the war in Ukraine. Zurich, a Swiss insurance giant, recently acquired Beazley, a large Lloyd's underwriter, prompted by growing interest in cyber and energy-infrastructure cover.
The political-violence insurance niche generates only about $1.2bn of annual premium income. After the Iran war began, insuring some assets in the Gulf cost up to 40 times the pre-war rate; claims are thought to run into the billions, possibly erasing years of revenue. Many contracts also promise reimbursement for business interruption. Marine-war premiums for ships attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz are 10 to 20 times the pre-war rate, according to WTW. Marine insurers collect premiums totalling around $40bn a year; oil tankers fetch $80m-$120m apiece. Many marine policies have "blocking and trapping" provisions that trigger payouts after a vessel has been stranded for six or 12 months; after Russia invaded Ukraine, such clauses eventually led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, and far more boats are now stuck in the Gulf than ever were in the Black Sea. Insurers and reinsurers typically renegotiate contracts each January 1st.
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