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Lloyd’s sets out recommendations for building simpler insurance products in response to COVID-19

Mon 12 Oct 2020

Lloyd’s, the world’s leading specialist insurance and reinsurance market, today published a new report, Building simpler insurance products to better protect customers, which sets out a number of ways the global insurance industry could remove complexity and provide enhanced coverage clarity for their customers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion irreversible societal change around the world, calling for new insurance solutions and greater protection for customers’ short, medium, and long-term needs. As countries and businesses begin to reopen cautiously and recover from the immediate economic and societal impacts, the insurance industry must take this opportunity to improve the way it protects its customers.

While the global insurance industry’s response and recovery efforts continue to expand through claims payments, charitable donations, and product innovation, there have been distinct complications that have arisen from pandemic insurance coverage uncertainty and resulting court disputes between insurers and their customers. 

This report, developed in collaboration with Lloyd’s Global and UK Advisory Committees, has been published to support the global insurance industry’s efforts to better serve its customers through simpler products that promote enhanced understanding of coverages. It provides three important recommendations that the industry should implement to respond to the challenges that COVID-19 has presented: 

  1. Leverage and build on the application of existing leading practice, including a linguistics review of customer documentation - for both simple and more complex products.
  2. Invest in continuous product design and delivery innovations, including data-led policies and digital contracts, as well as exploring more radical options like parametric or outcome-based insurance.
  3. Involve customers directly in product design to build simpler, more relevant products for their changing needs and post-pandemic risk profiles.

Alongside the global industry recommendations, Lloyd’s is taking its own affirmative action which includes reviewing how products are developed, designed and distributed, as well as reaching out to trading partners, risk managers and customers, so it can proactively implement changes across its global marketplace to enhance customer outcomes and more effectively meet their needs.

The report also looks at the steps the insurance industry and regulators have already taken towards addressing issues around insurance product complexity and clarity of coverage, including regulation, guidance and codes of conduct.

Lloyd’s CEO, John Neal, said: “As many businesses around the world evolve to withstand the continued impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including radically changing their business models, the insurance industry must urgently reassess how it can better serve and support its customers. While the societal and economic impacts of the pandemic are of a scale that has never before been experienced, it has reinforced the global industry imperative to accelerate its efforts to build simpler insurance products that are more easily understood by its customers.”

Flora Hamilton, Director of Financial Services, CBI, added: “In a fast moving, changing market this welcome report from Lloyd’s highlights the importance of simplicity in a complex world. The CBI welcomes the focus on innovation and collaboration, this will be needed more than ever as we build back better from the pandemic. We hope this outcomes-based approach influences wider debates about resilience in the UK economy.”

*Global Advisory Committee
Oliver Bäte, CEO, Allianz; Andrew Brooks, CEO, Ascot; Thomas Buberl, CEO, Axa; Bruce Carnegie-Brown, Chairman, Lloyd's; Greg Case, CEO, Aon; Brian Duppereault, CEO, AIG; Dan Glaser, President and CEO, Marsh & McLennan;; John Haley, CEO, Willis Towers Watson; Andrew Horton, CEO, Beazley; Bronek Masojada, CEO, Hiscox; John Neal, CEO, Lloyd's; Scott Purviance, CEO, Amwins

UK Advisory Committee
Andrew Brooks, Chair, Lloyd's Market Association (LMA); Sheila Cameron, CEO, LMA; Bruce Carnegie-Brown (Chair), Chairman, Lloyd's; Chris Croft, CEO, London and International Insurance Brokers Association (LIIBA); Richard Dudley, Chair, LIIBA; Andrew Horton, CEO, Beazley; Julian Enoizi, CEO, Pool Re; Huw Evans, Director General, Association of British Insurers; Sian Fisher, CEO, Chartered Insurance Institute; Clare Lebecq, CEO, London Market Group; Steve McGill, CEO, McGill and Partners; Bronek Masojada, Chair, Placing Platform Limited ; Dave Matcham, CEO, International Underwriting Association; John Neal, CEO, Lloyd's; Malcolm Newman, Chair, International Underwriting Association

UK Enquiries to:
Lloyd’s Press Office
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7327 5111 Email: pressoffice@lloyds.com

Americas enquiries to:
Nathan Hambrook-Skinner, Senior Business Partner, Americas
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7327 6125 Email: nathan.hambrook-skinner@lloyds.com

EMEA enquiries to:
Elliot Maule, Senior Business Partner, EMEA
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7327 5721 Email: Elliot.Maule@lloyds.com

APAC enquiries to:
Sandpiper Communications
Tel: +65 6971 1097 Email : Jackson.Au@sandpipercomms.com

About Lloyd’s
Lloyd’s is the world’s leading insurance and reinsurance marketplace. Through the collective intelligence and risk-sharing expertise of the market’s underwriters and brokers, Lloyd’s helps to create a braver world.

The Lloyd’s market provides the leadership and insight to anticipate and understand risk, and the knowledge to develop relevant, new and innovative forms of insurance for customers globally.

It offers the efficiencies of shared resources and services in a marketplace that covers and shares risks from more than 200 territories, in any industry, at any scale.
And it promises a trusted, enduring partnership built on the confidence that Lloyd’s protects what matters most: helping people, businesses and communities to recover in times of need.

Lloyd’s began with a few courageous entrepreneurs in a coffeeshop. Three centuries later, the Lloyd’s market continues that proud tradition, sharing risk in order to protect, build resilience and inspire courage everywhere.