Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry

by Matthew Campbell

in 2019, the total volume of goods loaded onto ships worldwide, oil included, exceeded 11 billion metric tons,

The first thing to know about Lloyd’s is that it doesn’t, in fact, sell insurance, and it never has. The name instead refers to an umbrella organization for hundreds of “members”—a mix of corporations and wealthy individuals—who actually provide policies, which are then said to have been sold at Lloyd’s. The next thing to know about Lloyd’s is that it is everywhere. If you take a train to work, there is a good chance that train was insured at Lloyd’s.

The Titanic was insured at Lloyd’s. When Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted segregated buses in the 1950s, Lloyd’s was the only place they could find to insure their substitute carpool system. After 9/11, Lloyd’s members paid out billions of dollars to airlines, businesses in crisis, and the relatives of those killed in the attacks. If you were to compile a list of the worst catastrophes of the last century, virtually all of them would, at some point, have ended up as claims at Lloyd’s, to be assessed and valued by Englishmen in bespoke suits who represent billions upon billions of dollars in capital.

The amount of money that now passes through Lloyd’s is difficult to fathom. Every year its members collect 35 billion pounds, or roughly $49 billion, in premiums. That’s just what customers pay to be insured.

Plimsoll was forced to apologize for his comments, but his campaign led to the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, which required every vessel to have a mark showing its maximum level of submergence to prevent overloading: the Plimsoll Line. (The term also gave rise to a popular style of rubber-lined gym shoe.)