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By Sinead Cruise
LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London reported a
2.5 billion pounds pretax profit ($2.97 billion) for 2019 on
Thursday thanks to tighter underwriting and robust investment
returns, and said it stood ready to support customers and
partners impacted by coronavirus.
The 330-year-old insurance market, which reports aggregate
result figures of its syndicate members, said its solvency ratio
- a key measure of balance sheet strength - was 205%, despite a
high degree of turbulence in financial markets in recent weeks.
But it gave no early indications of the extent to which its
members might be hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has
paralysed the global economy, forced the lockdown of billions of
people and claimed thousands of lives worldwide.
"Now more than ever, our customers need us to be ready to
support them through these challenging times," Bruce
Carnegie-Brown, Lloyd's Chairman said.
Earlier this month, Lloyds asked its member firms to provide
estimates of their potential current and final losses from
coronavirus to help the insurance market understand the likely
extent of the financial hit it will take from the pandemic.
Lloyd's of London insurers will be exposed to losses due to
the cancellation of scores of sports events and other mass
gatherings, as well as the postponement of the Olympics, though
the losses will be less severe than if the Games had been
cancelled altogether, industry sources say.
Lloyd's insurers include listed firms Beazley and
Hiscox.
Chief Executive John Neal said "it had never been more
important" to accelerate progress on its Future at Lloyd's
modernisation plan, which would speed up claims processing and
eventually see around 80% of its business supported digitally.
Lloyd's has shut its "underwriting room" - where insurers
and brokers transact deals face-to-face - for the first time in
its history due to the pandemic.
It had already started the process of moving the market to
electronic exchanges, to streamline operations and cut costs.
Lloyd's suffered steep losses in 2017 and 2018 due to
natural catastrophes such as hurricanes, typhoons and wildfires.
It had told members to cut their worst-performing lines of
business as part of a plan to return to profit in 2019.
The market, which covers commercial risks from oil rigs to
footballers' legs, recorded a loss of 1 billion pounds in 2018,
after a 2 billion pound loss in 2017.
($1 = 0.8430 pounds)
(Reporting by Sinead Cruise; editing by Simon Jessop)
Hiscox (HSX)
Beazley (BEZ)
