APAC ‘pivotal’ to Future at Lloyd’s growth strategy – John Neal

The Asia Pacific (APAC) market remains pivotal to the Future at Lloyd’s growth strategy, Lloyd’s chief executive John Neal has insisted to delegates at SIRC’s 16^th annual conference in Singapore today.

Neal said: “It is a region that we are committed to for the long-term, particularly as we celebrate our 20^th year in Singapore this year.”

“APAC remains attractive to Lloyd’s. The region represents a significant source of capital coming into the marketplace, roughly 15% of the capital that sits behind Lloyd’s businesses comes from Asia.

APAC is Lloyd’s 5^th largest marketplace based on premium written.

Not counting the 2011 exceptional flood losses, the average combined operational ratio since 2010 has been 94%.

Room for growth

But he stressed that there was room for growth. “As we know, insurance penetration in the region is extremely low. If we increase the efficiency of our APAC platform, it makes it easier and more attractive to work with and access and will help those on the Asia platform to take full account and benefit of these future growth strategies,” he added.

Neal discussed the impact of integrating performance, strategy, culture and people into the Asia platform and the difference it could make.

“We think it could be significant” he stated.

These priorities are already being integrated in Lloyd’s Asia.

Neal added that it has the potential increase Lloyd’s onshore premium growth in Singapore and reduce the cost of doing business. Much of this would be driven by the combination of the two platforms – complex risk and the risk exchange.

But it will also be driven by new business and innovation that supports syndicate-in-a-box.

End-customer experience

“In combination, we think that the Future at Lloyd’s will make Lloyd’s Asia much more profitable and offer a much more attractive end-customer experience,” he added.

But Neal said that the Lloyd’s must make “meaningful change”, although he saw the future as the best opportunity to improve the way it does things in London and around the world and think innovatively about the best way forward.

“This means building the technology and data solutions, instead of bricks and mortar. It means making it easier for new innovative business to come to Lloyd’s so that we can close that gap. It means attracting investors back to our underwriting so that customers can insure all the risks they place. It means harnessing technology to drive down cost to increase profitability,” he concluded.