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Burling, Julian; Lazarus, Kevin --- "Introduction" [2012] ELECD 152; in Burling, Julian; Lazarus, Kevin (eds), "Research Handbook on International Insurance Law and Regulation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Insurance Law and Regulation

Editor(s): Burling, Julian; Lazarus, Kevin

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849807883

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Burling, Julian; Lazarus, Kevin

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

Introduction
Julian Burling and Kevin Lazarus



Imagine that it were possible to travel back and forth in time and imagine that one could
bring from the past one of the early underwriters who wrote in the Lloyd's market.
Perhaps we could bring to the present someone like John Julius Angerstein (c. 1735­
1823), often called the Father of Lloyd's.1 How would such an underwriter see things
today?
Of course, he would be struck by the clothes and the language, the size and the design of
the buildings and that there are things such as cars and aircraft, but let us put that to one
side. How would he find the insurance market as compared to the one he is used to?
In many respects he might find things surprisingly familiar. Within today's Lloyd's
market he would recognise underwriters sitting in the Lloyd's Underwriting Room, at
their boxes assessing and committing lines to risks. He would recognise the way in which
each underwriter will try to assess the risk of a loss and then set a premium that reflects
that risk and which, across a book of business, will ensure the underwriter makes a profit.
He would also recognise the way in which the underwriter might want to lay off some risk
to other underwriters by way of reinsurance (although this is not something he would
have done; reinsurance was illegal in England from 1745 to 1846). Our time-travelling
underwriter would also be familiar ...