GIM1230 - The UK insurance market: the London Market

The “London Market” is an international insurance market based in London. This is a major market for both insurance and reinsurance. Key players in the market are UK insurance companies, Lloyds syndicates and foreign insurers. A number of non-resident companies operate only at this level, doing no direct business and often using the same underwriting agents as Lloyd's syndicates. Some of the bigger non-resident companies in the London reinsurance market are major reinsurers on a worldwide scale. Most of the UK companies in this market also write direct business, but there are also some pure reinsurers.

In the past many of the bigger non-life insurers carried on business through branches overseas, particularly in Commonwealth or ex-colonial territories. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s much of this business was transferred to local subsidiaries, and much overseas business now takes this form. Since the completion of the EC single internal market, however, UK companies authorised by the FSA to carry on insurance business in the UK are no longer required to seek separate authorisation from the equivalent regulator in any EEA state in which they wish to carry on business through a branch.