Lloyd’s 2025 Insights Report Highlights Strong Performance and Investor Appeal
Insurance Capital Markets Research (ICMR) and the Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA) have released their 2nd annual report, the Lloyd’s 2025 Insights Report, providing a detailed analysis of Lloyd’s and syndicates’ 31/12/2024 year end results. The report reveals that Lloyd’s continues to deliver highly favourable returns to investors, with profits just shy of the previous year’s record, driven by favourable trading conditions and a return to more normal investment valuations. Despite major claims activity in 2024, including two US hurricanes, almost all individual syndicates reported an underwriting profit. Key findings from the report include:
- Lloyd’s reported £55,546m of gross written premium and a pre-tax profit of £9,626m for the 2024 financial year.
- The market continues to offer an attractive return on capital to investors with low correlation compared with other asset classes, driving ongoing investor interest.
- A significant portion of Lloyd’s premium growth has come from improved risk adjusted rate change (RARC), indicating a disciplined approach to growth.
- The positive impact of performance management at Lloyd’s is evident in the long-term underwriting results since its introduction in 2003.
- Lloyd’s returns on capital have traditionally compared favourably to Cat bond indices and other mainstream investments, also showing lower correlation.
- The RISX equity index, a benchmark for the global specialty (re)insurance sector with underwriting subsidiaries at Lloyd’s, shows accelerating investor expectations of positive returns from underwriting.
The report offers a deeper understanding of the drivers and trends underlying Lloyd’s performance for managing and members’ agencies, brokers, and investors. It highlights that Lloyd’s is still seen as an attractive place to invest, with increasing capital markets’ confidence.
Markus Gesmann, co-founder of ICMR, added: said: “The Lloyd’s market had another profitable year, out-performing peers and many other asset classes, yet a key issue remains of capital deployment. To improve efficiency and leverage strong returns, innovative models like ‘barbell’ strategies, initially deploying liquid funds in the sector before scaling up Funds at Lloyd’s when needed, can be used to satisfy investors and asset managers deployment requirements.”
Paul Davenport, Finance & Risk Director at the LMA, said: “At an individual syndicate level, almost all syndicates have made an underwriting profit in 2024, despite the market being tested by some major claims events which were absent in 2023. While closer to average, 2024 major claims still fell below long-term levels. Given the extra costs and capital loadings applied to start-up syndicates, the analysis shows that the post-COVID window was clearly a good time to commence underwriting in Lloyd’s.”
Contacts
ICMR
- Markus Gesmann Co-founder & Director
- Quentin Moore Co-founder & Director
LMA
- Paul Davenport Finance & Risk Director
- Sanjiv Sharma Head of Actuarial & Exposure Management
About ICMR
Insurance Capital Markets Research (ICMR) is a quantitative analytics company undertaking research on the global specialty (re)insurance industry. Their core capability is the independent assessment of prospective performance and return profiles of insurance entities and portfolios of risk, with a particular focus on Lloyd’s.
About the LMA
The Lloyd’s Market Association (LMA) represents the interests of all Lloyd’s managing agencies and members’ agents. It provides professional and technical expertise and works in partnership with Lloyd’s and other market associations to influence initiatives and outcomes.
The full report, “Lloyd’s 2025 Insights Report”, dated 8 April 2025, is available at https://insurancecapitalmarkets.com/lloydsmarket2025/