Inga Beale, the first female chief executive of Lloyd’s of London, is to step down next year after five years in the job.
News of her departure comes just a year after Bruce Carnegie-Brown was appointed chairman, and amid concerns that the centuries-old insurance market is increasingly outdated.
Mr Carnegie-Brown said: “In her five years at Lloyd’s, Inga has set in motion a series of changes aimed at modernising the market and making it more efficient and inclusive. Her boldness and persistence have generated the momentum required to bring about real change.”
Ms Beale made modernisation one of her priorities, and has made progress in overhauling the way that the market operates. But critics say that this work has been too slow. Two years ago, for example, Lloyd’s introduced a new electronic trading system but take-up was so disappointing that earlier this year Ms Beale said she would force insurers and brokers to use it. People that work in the market say that its costs remain too high.
There is concern in the market that Lloyd’s is losing its competitive edge, and that it is ceding ground to other centres for the insurance industry such as Singapore.
Ms Beale also leaves after one of the market’s toughest years for a decade. Lloyd’s posted a loss of £2bn last year, against a profit of a similar size in 2016. Part of that was down to a string of natural disasters that hit North America and the Caribbean, but even non-catastrophe-exposed lines of business recorded losses.
