Insurance marketing association in London, specializing in high-risk insurance services.
Its history dates to 1688, when Edward Lloyd kept a London coffeehouse where merchants, seafarers, and marine-insurance underwriters met to transact business. The underwriters at Lloyd's eventually formed a marine-insurance association (incorporated 1871); it expanded to include other forms of insurance in 1911. After a series of financial scandals, the corporation was reorganized under the Lloyd's Act of 1982. Today Lloyd's consists of more than 20,000 individual members organized in several hundred syndicates, which are represented at Lloyd's by underwriting agents. Individual syndicate members, rather than the corporation, are liable for losses. Until record losses in the 1980s and '90s bankrupted some syndicate members, they had unlimited liability for business transacted for them; in 1993 that liability was limited. See also insurance , liability insurance .