CITY AND SUBURBAN
In Lloyd's secret garden of earthly delights, the odds are on the Nubian
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
To join Lloyd's of London, it has long seemed to me, is to be the traveller in the Arabian Nights who comes to a gateway where a monstrous Nubian stands on guard. Through the gateway the traveller can see a garden, where lovely girls are playing chess. It is explained to him that he can go into the garden and challenge one of the girls to a game. If he wins, there is no pleasure that she will deny him. If he loses, though, he must submit himself to the plea- sures of the Nubian. Travellers to Lloyd's who contemplate this bet need to know the odds. Across town, the insurance regulators at the Department of Trade and Industry who saw Lloyd's through know better than anybody what a narrow squeak it was. They shudder to think of an insurance market whose finances depended on bank guaran- tees backed by the members' Old Recto- ries. They are reviewing the rules, and I expect them to make Lloyd's members put more cash up front — perhaps twice as much. At the same time Lloyd's is review- ing its own rules. Lloyd's members have from the beginning clubbed together in joint ventures with a lifespan of one year — disbanding at the end of it, sharing out profits or losses and then, if they want to, starting again. From this archaic way of doing things stem many of Lloyd's costs and troubles, and a working party under Jonathan Agnew can be expected to say so. Lloyd's will soon be a market dominated by the specialised insurance companies like Limit, which Mr Agnew chairs. There ought still to be room for a few well-heeled punters who know what they are doing, but the traveller at the Old Rectory will find out that Lloyd's is no place for him. The odds favour the Nubian.
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