Confessions from the City: The Insurance Consultant

Down the pub, saying you work in insurance and IT is the social equivalent of saying you’re into stamp collecting.

And you’ve brought your book. “Uh huh,” comes the reply. But life at Lloyd’s of London is unrelentingly lively.

Let me talk you through a recent day: over the morning latte en route to EC3, I scan the trade press, reading of more frets about the ploys of bosses and market reformers.

They want to replicate Lime Street’s finest institution around the globe, apparently.

I doubt whether an office in Kathmandu is the answer, or whether the flamboyance of Richard Rogers’ iconic design could be replicated with all that snow in the way.

Coffee drunk, I head for an early meeting to discuss cyber attacks.

Tesco Bank, Yahoo and TalkTalk are in the headlines, and everyone’s jittery. Understanding of these risks at board level in the City is pretty limited but Lloyd’s underwriters, although sometimes considered IT Luddites, are designing cyber risk policies the rest of the world will follow.

Then to the day’s most important meeting, a trip down the rabbit hole.

Most of Lloyd’s most important business used to be done underground, out of sight of management, but the below-street bars are drying up. With the space being created by the demolition of anything made of stone, the bars are disappearing fast.

Over a fish finger sandwich and a pint, I hear gossip of an amusing bust-up: central IT services at the Lloyd’s building have apparently had an argument with reformers. Choice language was bouncing off the walls like squash balls, the tale goes. A friend from Hong Kong is in town, a second pint is had. A third.

Back above ground, I bump into more worriers, this time about a lack of diversity at the market. I never know what this means. Historically, the London insurance market has always appreciated and nurtured good people. If it is a fear that not enough females are employed in EC3, then it doesn’t seem to be borne out, with Inga Beale in the chair and plenty of female underwriters and brokers.

The London insurance market is a top place to work, where people dress up, not down, and men are old English polite in the extreme.

Any child showing an interest in insurance as a career should head to the Lloyd’s recruitment centre, not sit in a village office using comparison sites advertised by a fat, moustachioed opera singer.