Britain: Taking the Big Risks

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As the world's best-known insurer, Lloyd's of London manages to thrive on modern risk while paying homage to 275 years of tradition. In Lloyd's five-story London headquarters, where it moved only six years ago, reports of ships lost at sea are still registered with an elegant quill, and attendants are clad in scarlet coat and black collar. Important news is heralded by strokes from an ancient battleship bell—one stroke for bad news, two for good. Last week Lloyd's had some bad news: it suffered one of its worst losses in Britain's great train robbery (see THE WORLD). This week, however, it will report some cheerier tidings: annual premium income has risen to a record high of $983 million.

Noses & Newborn Twins. Lloyd's old-fashioned ways cover a shrewd, practical attitude toward risk taking. Lloyd's prospers by conceiving new forms of insurance, accepting risks that no other insurer would dare, and keeping a wet finger in the shifting winds of world business, politics and science. It recently insured the on-time opening of the New York World's Fair next April. In February, Canada's missilemen scrubbed a scheduled launch just before countdown until liability coverage could be placed with Lloyd's — the only in surer that would touch it. "But we exercise our ruthlessness and choose only those risks we feel are insurable," says one Lloyd's underwriter. World War II was partly insurable for Lloyd's, which sold monthly policies against death or dismemberment caused by buzz bombs after calculating the odds at 1,000 to 1. But nuclear war is quite another mat ter; Lloyd's has added a clause canceling all its maritime policies in event of East-West conflagration "whether there be a declaration of war or not."

Little else daunts Lloyd's. It has covered Durante's nose, Dietrich's legs, Callas' voice and Nikita Khrushchev's safety on his 1959 visit to the U.S. Many fathers of newborn twins have collected from Lloyd's, and 20th Century-Fox recovered $2,000,000 from Lloyd's when Elizabeth Taylor's illness delayed the filming of Cleopatra. Ever alert to a little publicity when the price is right, Lloyd's even covered a Manchester cinema against its patrons' strain, wrench or rupture due to "excessive laughter."

All this is mere jam to the real bread of Lloyd's, which issues one-third of all British insurance (except long-term life) and more than one-half of the world's maritime insurance. It sells some 2,000,000 policies a year in 150 countries and has 1,500 agents stationed the world over to follow the movements of every ship at sea, report on pilferage or disaster and settle claims. In recent years, the bulk of Lloyd's insurance has shifted from maritime policies toward aviation, accident, fire, burglary and motor insurance. Lloyd's now does half of its business overseas.