Lloyd’s of London wants third of market’s new hires to be ethnic minorities

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Nearly 50,000 staff are employed in Lloyd’s underwriting and broking firms, which arrange specialist risks from oil rigs to footballers’ legs.

Currently, only 8% of the market comes from an ethnic minority, according to Lloyd’s data. At the Corporation of Lloyd’s, which oversees the market, the figure is 22%.

Lloyd’s said in a statement that its “ambition” was that a third of all new hires should come from ethnic minority backgrounds, at all levels including leadership.

“Almost certainly, quite a lot of ethnic minorities aren’t that interested in insurance and not particularly interested in exploring insurance as a career,” Lloyd’s chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters.

“Even those that are might not think that they’d be welcome. We need to work in a different way to make ourselves more accessible and more interesting.”

Lloyd’s also said it would mandate the collection of ethnicity data across the market. Only 74% of firms currently provide that data.

Lloyd’s has been seeking to improve its reputation on diversity and inclusion in recent years, after admitting the market had problems with sexual harassment and daytime drinking.