The Challenge

Many senior underwriters in the London Market have asserted that it is not necessary to have a degree to be a Lloyd's underwriter, and they are right; many successful underwriters are not graduates.

The traditional source of talent for the Lloyd's Market were "bright" but inexperienced 16 or 18 year old school leavers who joined a managing agency or broker, starting "at the bottom", and gradually learning: how the market operates; who's who; the nature of the insurance industry; how to assess a risk; and so on.  However, in recent years, changes in education policy have effectively removed the traditional source, with the great majority of "bright" school leavers going on to university.  The result is that today, by far the largest pool of available young people looking to embark upon a career in the financial sector are graduates aged 21 - 22.  They are different to the school leavers of yesterday; they come with more experience and higher expectations.  In addition, the work of the London Market has become more complex.

Lloyd's is in competition for recruits with other areas of the City, and graduates joining firms at Lloyd's expect similar career progression and levels of responsibility.

Conventional wisdom holds that it takes at least five years to develop an underwriter to the point where they can personally write new business.  Talented young graduates are unlikely to be prepared to wait until they are in their late 20's before they are given the responsibility for doing "real work".

The challenge then is to adapt the apprenticeship to take account of the more extensively educated graduate recruit and to shorten the period before new hires add real financial value to meet the business needs of managing agents and graduates' expectations.

The Prize is significant.