It’s not just in the world of life and pensions that the threat to UK insurance is being noted
The question Parul Kaul-Green
is asking is why we so undervalue firms like L&G or is it “why do american markets so over-value Apollo?
Clearly, and this I hadn’t realised, the general insurance world has the same threat as life insurance
If Hiscox follows Beazley out of the public market, the London-listed Lloyd’s specialty sector effectively disappears as an investable equity asset class. The expertise, capital, and underwriting culture that makes Lloyd’s function would be owned primarily from Zurich, Toronto, and New York.
I don’t mean to sound naive, but I thought that London was the home of Lloyds and its “function”. I thought that we as a nation had the annuity industry that everyone else envies?
We are about to have a world cup in America where we will present ourselves as the home of football, no matter how much better Europe and South America have been over the last 10o years , we still are regarded as a favorite!
We ought to ask whether don’t value ourselves a little less than others do – a little less than we are worth!