The Early Days of the Non-Marine Underwriters
Tue 23 Aug 2011
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As part of the hundredth anniversary of the 1911 Lloyd’s Act, lloyds.com looks at the early days of writing non-marine risks
In 1910, the Non-Marine Underwriters association had been formed – and they expected equality in the market. This led to the 1911 Act. But what were they writing?
Health and Safety
Much of the non-marine work covered major global risks – riots in Mexico, or fires in Chicago. In fact, 1910 marked the end of a torrid decade of disaster, punctuated by not only the San Francisco Earthquake, but also devastating fires on US steamships and in the Iroquois Theatre in Illinois.
These tragedies, which killed thousands and cost well over half a billion dollars at the time, changed the Health and Safety landscape, something which the Insurance industry was closely involved in.
The US brokerage firm Rollins Burdick Hunter – whose partnership with Cuthbert Heath did much to establish Lloyd’s in the US – set up its own department of fire engineering to examine how to limit the spread of a fire in industrial premises.
Changing landscape
Closer to home, the social and insurance landscape of the United Kingdom was changing, and in 1906 Cuthbert Heath was called in to discuss workmen’s compensation with David Lloyd George, then President of the Board of Trade.
As a result, the queue for brokers wanting liability cover was so long that it led to a reprimand from the Chairman [source: Anthony Brown’s Cuthbert Heath: Maker of the Modern Lloyd's of London 1980].
But not all of the work of the Non-Marine Underwriters association was serious. If it ushered in the age of planes, trains and automobiles at Lloyd’s, it also set the stage for legs, ghosts, monsters and many other quirky risks which have done so much to cement Lloyd’s reputation as underwriters extraordinaire in the public imagination.
Members of the new committee insured a dog collar manufacturer to set up an insurance scheme for lost pets. And while the then Chairman of Lloyd’s was invited to attend the pomp of George V’s 1911 Coronation, enterprising non-marine underwriters were figuring out how to write cancellation insurance.
