Transforming Lloyd’s culture
Transforming Lloyd’s culture is a strategic imperative for the future success of our marketplace – one which is powered by the intellect of its people, who together create our shared culture and our shared future. To get there, we need to be brave in our actions to accelerate change and be transparent in how we measure our progress and hold ourselves to account.
In 2019, we launched a comprehensive programme of actions to drive long-term culture change in the Lloyd’s market. These included forming the Lloyd’s Culture Advisory Group and launching a Speaking Up campaign, as well as setting business conduct standards that everyone working in the Lloyd’s market is expected to adhere to.
In 2020 we fulfilled all our 2019 commitments, from launching the Lloyd’s Culture Dashboard and publishing a toolkit, to setting gender targets for the market and running our annual market culture survey for the second time.
Culture Advisory Group
On 30 January 2020, our independent Culture Advisory Group held its inaugural meeting. The Group provides expert advice and robust challenge to help ensure that Lloyd’s is taking the right actions to effect sustainable and measurable culture change. The Culture Advisory Group helps to identify measurable outcomes, critically assess progress against these outcomes, and play a pivotal role in creating the aspirational culture of integrity, respect and inclusion across the Lloyd’s market.
Culture dashboard
In July we launched the Lloyd’s Culture Dashboard which benchmarks the market’s starting point and is intended to transparently track Lloyd’s collective progress towards a much more inclusive environment. The Dashboard is our ‘version one’ of what will be an evolving representation of Lloyd’s progress across key culture indicators. It presents the current view of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability, alongside the importance of culture within individual firms. We will be continuing to work with market firms in 2021 to collect data that can inform our actions and measure our progress.Gender and ethnicity action
One of the loudest messages we heard from the 2019 market-wide culture survey was that we need to radically improve the experience of women working in the Lloyd’s market. In the Corporation, we have taken focused and deliberate action to do just that. We have improved our gender balance in leadership roles to 47% - it can be done, and we are all the better for it.
Gender balance
Alongside the Culture Dashboard, we announced a short-term objective to improve the gender balance in leadership roles across the market by setting a target, and a medium-term ambition for parity over the next decade.We set an interim target of 35% female representation in leadership positions across the market to be achieved by 31 December 2023 (Board, Executive Committee and Executive Committee Direct Reports). In addition, Boards and Executive Committees combined will be expected to achieve at least 20% female representation by the end of 2023. New market entrants will be expected to meet these expectations on arrival.
In October, we also set a diversity policy for Lloyd’s Council stating that a minimum of 33% of the Council should be female and/or from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background by the end of 2023.
Ethnicity
Lloyd’s is committed to improving the experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent in our market, by taking meaningful and measurable action to level the playing field and increase the representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues across the market, particularly across leadership roles. To support this, Lloyd’s is focusing on improving the collection of ethnicity data and other characteristics to enable it to fully understand its starting point and set a market target for ethnicity in Q2 2021.In June, we announced a number of initiatives to help improve the experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent in the Lloyd's market. We will:
Invest in positive programmes to attract, retain and develop Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic talent in the Lloyd’s market, including launching our ‘Accelerate’ Programme – a modular programme to develop Ethnic Minority Future Leaders across the market.
Review our employee and partner policies, as well as our organisational artefacts, to ensure that they are explicitly non-racist.
Commit to education and research. We will educate our colleagues and continue our research into the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic professionals working in insurance, and share what we learn with the market.
Provide financial support to charities and organisations promoting opportunity and inclusion for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups.
Develop a long-term action plan in collaboration with our Culture Advisory Group, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues and white allies who will inform our journey and hold us to account.
There is a long way to go but we are determined that we can and will create a culture in the Lloyd’s market in which everybody can flourish.
Culture toolkit
To support the market in creating an inclusive culture that attracts the most talented people in the world, we developed a new culture toolkit consisting of practical tools, techniques and training advice for firms wishing to move towards a high-performing culture. Different organisations will be at different stages of ‘cultural maturity’, but these materials provide a standardised approach for them to use. A high-performing culture maximises human potential and business performance and this is what we want to deliver for our market, our colleagues and our clients.
Culture survey
As part of our commitment to improve market data and measure progress, we ran our annual market culture survey for the second time in October. The results demonstrate that the actions we’ve taken are delivering positive and measurable change, with improvements across all priority areas. Read the results in full.