Lloyd’s Chair to Resign, Position Goes Part-time

Max Taylor, the current chairman of Lloyd’s, will be leaving the position he has held for the past three years when his term is up in December 2000.

The Council of Lloyd’s also announced that starting in 2001, the role of chairman will revert to a part-time position for the first time since 1992.

Adrian Beeby, head of media relations for Lloyd’s, explained that for the vast majority of Lloyd’s history, the role of chairman has been a part-time role and only became full-time in 1992. At that point, the market was dealing with the aftermath of the period of 1988 to 1992, when a number of man-made and natural catastrophes combined with poor market conditions caused Lloyd’s to sustain huge losses, and a great many of Lloyd’s Names were driven to the point of bankruptcy.

This situation led to a program called Reconstruction and Renewal, a wholesale reconstruction of the Lloyd’s market completed in 1996. In addition, there was a selling off of a great amount of assets, and the setting up of Equitas, the Lloyd’s reinsurance vehicle, a separate company to reinsure Lloyd’s 1992 and prior liabilities.

“That’s why we needed a full-time chairman-to deal with those issues,” Beeby continued. “Max Taylor, when he came in 1997, was really picking up the tail end of that. He’s reached the end of his three-year tenure, so it’s a good point to actually make that change and revert to the part-time.”

Moreover, in 2000, the market has quieted down a great deal, and Lloyd’s finds itself back to a situation where it doesn’t need a full-time chairman the way it did in the early ’90s. “Also now we have a chief executive [Nick Prettejohn], which we didn’t have for a long time in the past,” Beeby said.

Taylor, who was elected to serve during 1998, 1999 and 2000, had the option to seek re-election at the end of his three-year tenure.

“But he along with Council have decided that role was going to become part-time,” Beeby said. “While [Taylor] accepts that that’s the right thing for Lloyd’s, Max wants a full-time career, so will not seek re-election and will work elsewhere from 2001.” Taylor indicated that he would not announce where he is going next until after he has left Lloyd’s in January of 2001.

He will be succeeded by Saxon Riley, current deputy chairman of Lloyd’s, who will assume the role of chairman for a one-year period, during which time, a new candidate will be selected to stand for election to the position of part-time chairmanship. Riley will be assisted by Prettejohn, serving in the dual capacity of CEO of Lloyd’s and chairman of the Lloyd’s Market Board.

“Sax has been our deputy chairman, knows the market extremely well and is able to step in and fill this one-year period until we can have a proper election for the three-year period 2001 to 2004,” Beeby said.

Lloyd’s governance is controlled by a U.K. act of Parliament, called the Lloyd’s Act. “It lays down our process and procedures for elections,” Beeby explained. “In this case, to stand for chairman, you have to be elected to Council. The reason we have this one-year gap is because we need people to be elected to Council on the basis that once on the Council, if they wish to run for chairman, it’s [as] a part-time chairman.” Before being elected chairman of Lloyd’s, Taylor, who also chairs Lloyd’s Council, served for nearly three decades at Willis, working in both the U.S. and Japan in a number of positions, including director of Willis Corroon Group plc and chairman and CEO of Willis Faber & Dumas. In 1997, he was appointed group executive director.

In addition, he is the first Briton elected to the board of the Insurance Information Institute. He is a former chairman of the London Insurance Market Network, a past director of the World Insurance Network and a director of WISe. He is also a past chairman of the Lloyd’s Insurance Brokers Committee and president-elect of the Insurance Institute of London.

Riley, whose career in the insurance industry began in 1955, previously served in a variety of capacities for Sedgwick Group plc in London. During the 1990s, these included vice chairman; managing director with responsibility for the group’s insurance, reinsurance broking and risk service activities worldwide; chief executive; and chairman.

In January 1999, subsequent to the sale of the Sedgwick Group to Marsh McLennan Companies Inc. (MMC), Riley was appointed director of MMC. That month he was also elected to the Council of Lloyd’s.

Topics Excess Surplus London Lloyd's