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Lloyd’s Market Policies and Practices return shows strong progress on diversity and inclusion

05 Mar 2024

Lloyd’s, the world’s leading marketplace for insurance and reinsurance, has today published the results from its fifth Market Policies and Practices (MP&P) return, which shows more market firms adopting practices that underpin an inclusive and high performance culture, most notably through increased leadership focus and accountability for culture against measurable targets.

This year’s market return showed progress on its diversity targets including women in leadership and ethnically diverse hiring:

  • The proportion of women in leadership roles has increased +3 percentage points (pp) to 35%, with improvements across all three levels (Boards, Executive Committees and direct reports of Executive Committees), meeting the short term target set in 2020
  • 21% of new hires in the last year came from an ethnically diverse background, an increase of +4pp. Representation of this group in the market increased by +2pp to 13%
  • 71% of firms are currently working with partners to undertake outreach activity, +12pp, and are adopting inclusive hiring practices to remove bias in recruitment processes. There has been an increase in wider inclusivity policies and practices such as menopause support (54% of firms, +23pp) and drugs and alcohol policies (97% of firms, +13pp)
  • The collection of diversity data collection has shown improvement - including ethnicity (+6pp), disability (+6pp), sexual orientation (+15pp) and social mobility (+16pp)
“Today’s update shows the steps we’ve taken to improve the culture in our market, from our oversight framework, to our upskilling programme and our public targets, are working. Whilst we’ve hit our short term target for 35% of leadership positions to be filled by women, and the market continues to make progress on representation of diverse groups, we still have a way to go on our culture journey. We will continue to support the market so that Lloyd’s is a destination of choice for global talent, and attracts the best and brightest minds, wherever they come from.”
Sara Gomez, Lloyd’s Chief People Officer

Lloyd’s will continue its work with the market to build a diverse talent pipeline through its outreach activities attracting talent to areas such as underwriting, where there remains under-representation. The focus will remain on enhancing the market oversight framework for culture and increasing diversity data collection.

The recent launch of the Inclusive Futures programme of initiatives will support continued progress in increasing the ethnic diversity of the market, including Board level and early careers talent pools alongside greater market-wide participation in outreach, including the ‘Dive In to Insurance’ outreach opportunities.

Key points from Lloyd’s fifth Market Policies and Practices (MP&P) return:

Gender 

Lloyd’s has achieved the 35% target it set for women in leadership positions in the market, an increase of +3pp from last year, and +6pp from when the target was set in 2020. There were improvements at all leadership levels, with women making up 25% of Boards (+3pp), 28% of Executive Committees (+2pp) and 36% of Direct Reports to Executive Committee (+2pp). 45% of firms met or exceeded the 35% target, +10pp from last year.

Of the 57,000 people that the return covers, women now make up 43.4% of the total workforce (+0.4pp) and in 2023, 46% of new hires were women.

Ethnicity 

Lloyd’s ‘one in three’ hiring ambition showed progress, with 21% of new hires in the last year coming from an ethnically diverse background, an increase of +4pp. 27% of graduates and apprentices hired had an ethnically diverse background and 32% of firms now have a hiring rate for this group above 30%, an increase of +4pp.

This progress has contributed to a continued increase in ethnic minority representation in the market workforce up to 13%, +2pp from last year, and +4pp over two years. After improvements last year, ethnic minority representation in leadership positions was steady at 9% with developing a diverse talent pipeline for Board roles a particular area of focus.

Disability, Sexual Orientation, Age and Social Mobility

Data collection across other diversity characteristics continues to improve, with 2% of employees disclosing a disability, long-term illness or health problem, unchanged for three years. 2% of employees disclosed they are LGB+, consistent for the last three years.

Increased reporting of age data reveals the proportion of the market under 30 years of age is increasing, and now stands at 24%, with 51% under 40 years of age. Collection of social mobility data also increased with 26% of firms starting to collect this data, although low disclosure rates mean it is not yet representative.

Notes to Editors

MP&P

The MP&P return is conducted annually by Lloyd’s to understand the workforce composition, policies and practices of firms who operate in the market and the progress made towards building a diverse, inclusive and high-performance culture.

MP&P was open from 13 December 2023 – 31 January 2024. The data reported is as at 31 December 2023.

68 from 69 firms completed MP&P this year, a 99% response rate. This comprised all 55 managing agents and 13 from 14 brokers invited.

The size of the total market workforce that MP&P data covers is 57,038 a significant increase from 48,263 people last year. The increases are largely related to growth and acquisitions.

Further resources

Dive In Festival Lloyd’s Inclusive Futures Programme of Initiatives

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