With its roots in marine insurance, Lloyd's were founded by Edward Lloyd at his coffeehouse on London's Tower Street in 1688. The shop was popular with sailors, shipowners and merchants because Lloyd catered to them with reliable shipping news. In the strictest sense, Lloyd’s are not an insurance company, but a group of individual investors, “members”, that work together to pool and manage risk. The firm insured slave ships until 1807 and lost vast amounts of money in the 1906 earthquake that devastated San Francisco. Many claims were denied in that disaster, but one of Lloyd's leading members, Cuthbert Heath, famously instructed his San Francisco agent to "pay all of our policy-holders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies". In April 1912 Lloyd's suffered perhaps its most famous loss, the sinking of the Titanic. The ship was insured for £1 million, 20 percent of the entire market's capacity, making it the largest marine risk ever. The record of its sinking in the 1912 "Loss Book" is on display in the Lloyd's building. But now an even greater catastrophe looms.
© 2024 John Oliver
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