Chief Executive Officer's statement

Throughout 2024, Lloyd’s continued to demonstrate its value as the world’s insurance partner, assisting and protecting economic growth, resilience and innovation around the world. Against a backdrop of increasing uncertainty, Lloyd’s supported its customers as they responded to a significant shift in the global geopolitical landscape accentuated by ongoing conflicts and high-profile elections, a series of extreme weather events, and accelerating technological advances. 

Our market’s ability to continue to deliver sustainable and attractive returns for our investors, and provide the solutions customers need to protect their balance sheets and revenue streams, is underpinned by our relentless focus on sustainable, profitable performance – which will always be our number one priority. This strength of focus on disciplined underwriting and profitable growth has supported the market’s year-on-year performance, importantly partnered by a high quality and resilient balance sheet. 

2024 marked another year of robust financial performance by Lloyd’s. The market’s combined operating ratio of 86.9% - the second consecutive year this has been sub 90% - and an underwriting profit of £5.3bn, represents one of our most profitable underwriting years in recent history. This result was underpinned by resilient underlying profitability across the market, with a combined ratio excluding major losses of 79.1%, now consistently around 80%, an improved attritional loss ratio of 47.1%, and expense ratio flat at 34.4%. 

Throughout 2024, market conditions remained favourable, with global insurance premiums continuing to grow well above the rate of GDP. Those conditions allowed the market to maintain targeted and sustainable growth, with full year gross written premiums increasing by 6.5% to £55.5bn, driven by a blend of 8.5% volume growth and 0.3% price increases, excluding adverse foreign exchange movement of (2.3)%. This growth was supported by several new entrants to Lloyd’s, underscoring the growing attractiveness of our market.

Investment returns of £4.9bn contributed to an overall result before tax of £9.6bn, representing two back-to-back years of solid results. Above all, we ended a year, which was characterised by two severe storms in the US, severe flooding in Europe and the Baltimore Bridge collapse with our balance sheet in superb shape.

The market’s consistent underwriting discipline and responsiveness to changing risk dynamics meant that we saw positive trends across a number of lines of business throughout 2024. Broadly, property classes remained well-priced, however some casualty classes continued to need focus, alongside specialty lines impacted by increased economic and geopolitical risks. These conditions saw appropriate underwriting actions taken by the market in selecting and pricing risks and prudent reserving for complex cases. 

In geographical terms, the US remained our most significant market in 2024. We continue to grow in the Americas more broadly and are encouraged by three consecutive strong years of growth in Europe now settling post Brexit. 

Lloyd’s continued to maintain an exceptionally strong capital position, with a central solvency ratio of 435% and a market-wide solvency ratio of 205%. The quality and strength of Lloyd’s balance sheet, coupled with industry-leading performance and strong strategic execution, saw Lloyd’s achieve its strongest set of financial strength ratings, with A.M. Best’s upgrade from A to A+ in August 2024, following S&P Global’s upgrade from A+ to AA- at the end of 2023. 

Our focus on executing against our strategy, alongside our principles-based oversight framework, over the past several years, has been matched by the market delivering consistently excellent results. These actions have put Lloyd’s in the strongest financial position in recent memory, with sustainable growth and record profits, and an industry-leading voice valued by governments, regulators and customers around the world. 

We were pleased to be able to hold our first ever Capital Markets Day in 2024, where we showcased the unique and enduring value proposition of Lloyd’s, which has driven new businesses and new capital to Lloyd’s in recent years. 

This is built on three distinct areas: strong and consistent financial performance; our relentless focus on underwriting discipline; and the benefits of global scale. These characteristics, alongside our trusted brand, a combination of our heritage and innovation, our expertise and our commitment to customers, create a distinct proposition to investors, but also underwriters, brokers and talent. 

As we look out at the challenges facing the world in the coming decades, these large and complex risks will only increase – whether that’s due to increasing global supply chain challenges, the impacts of a changing climate, or the rapidly accelerating pace of cyber and data risks, alongside the proliferation of generative AI. All of this means the demand for the solutions our marketplace provides will rise and require our industry to evolve and innovate to respond to that significant growth opportunity. 

Lloyd’s unique ecosystem allows us to meet this increased demand by balancing new, large and complex risks with opportunity. Our industry-leading performance, underwriting discipline and global scale underpin our ability to innovate and design the solutions our customers, businesses and governments need to manage their risks and balance sheets through increasing uncertainty.

Our value proposition continues to be strengthened by our execution against our strategic priorities which, alongside performance, are digitalisation, purpose and culture. 

We remain committed to improving the digital infrastructure of the market through Blueprint Two, which will deliver a more resilient, flexible and future-proofed technology platform. This is a significant and complex undertaking, as we are upgrading a platform shared by thousands of businesses, paying almost £60,000 in claims per minute. In 2024, we reset the programme under new leadership and developed an approach to deliver a safe cutover. Although it will take longer than anticipated to switch over to the new platform, I am comfortable that we are putting safety first. I am grateful for the steadfast commitment across all of our market associations, participants and vendors to get to this goal and to transform the digital infrastructure both Lloyd’s and the London market rely on to serve their customers. 

As the world continues to navigate uncertainty and volatility, our focus on delivering against our purpose saw us continue our partnerships with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), with whom we are delivering disaster risk financing to Small Island Developing States in the Pacific; a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bermuda Monetary Authority, a commitment to working collaboratively and sharing knowledge and expertise between the world’s two largest reinsurance hubs; together with illuminating emerging risks like cyber and generative AI through our Futureset research and interviews with leaders across business, government and broader society. What is clear is that we have an incredibly strong brand and reputation that have gone from strength to strength, meaning that our view on risk issues is valued and sought after by our most important stakeholders inside and outside the industry. 

We are committed to fostering a culture of high performance and inclusion. Having met our ambition in 2023, the market continued to improve its position on gender balance reaching 36% of women in leadership roles, whilst making progress on our hiring ambition for people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. 2024 saw the creation of Lloyd’s Inclusive Futures coalition: the collective of market firms and delivery partners behind the Inclusive Futures programme of initiatives launched in November 2023. The programme exists to support ethnically diverse talent who are interested in insurance, at all levels from the classroom to the boardroom. The programme has had early impact, including the first bursary cohort of 20 scholars, eight early careers hires from the talent pool and the start of a school engagement programme.

The outstanding result in 2024 gives us confidence for the future and that the market is well positioned to remain strong in 2025. Specialist, innovative and tailored policies are expected to stand up, against a backdrop of ongoing volatility. And these are the qualities where Lloyd’s excels. While the macroeconomic climate remains subdued, with growth in many markets remaining elusive, and concerns over global trade flows and further geopolitical tension the focus of boardroom discussions, our focus remains on sustainable profitability which will underpin our ability to deliver exceptional value to our market, our investors and our customers. This will continue to guide our approach to market oversight and growth aspirations, as we continue to remain agile to both the challenges and opportunities the ever changing risk landscape presents. 

I would like to thank members of the market and Corporation employees for their commitment and dedication to achieve such a stunning result for 2024 – this is the product of many years of focus and has been hard won. I am proud of what we have achieved together. Our huge thanks go to Bruce Carnegie-Brown, who will step down as Chair in April 2025 and who has served with real distinction. He leaves behind an organisation which is highly attractive to insurers, brokers, capital providers and talent. We have a market which is characterised by diversity – in terms of our underwriters and brokers, our capital providers, the depth and breadth of our stakeholders and of course, our talent base. 

I am confident that Lloyd’s strongest years are ahead of it. There is no doubt that the world needs what Lloyd’s provides: an ability to provide the confidence to millions of people and businesses to innovate, invest and take managed risk.

John Neal

Chief Executive Officer