Lloyd’s of London is one of those British corporate brands known the world over by people who might not even know what it does. Lloyd’s is, of course, the world’s largest insurance marketplace, where thousands of companies, underwriters and brokers come together to price and sell billions of dollars of risk premiums every year. It’s a business that is booming in an ever riskier world; last year was Lloyd’s most profitable since 2007. 

The company is at the epicentre of global underwriting, but it started in a humble coffee shop on the Thames, where 17th-century trader Edward Lloyd published shipping news and provided a gathering place for merchants looking to cut deals and exchange information. 

“Back then, one in five voyages ended up in some form of trouble, with pirates or weather or something,” says John Neal, the current chief executive of Lloyd’s, with whom I’m meeting on a sunny afternoon in New York to discuss how insurers think about their business at a moment when so many risk vectors — from geopolitical to monetary, to technological, demographic and climate-related — are in flux.