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BW visit the Lloyd's Building
A large group of staff from Barnett Waddingham's London office enjoyed a recent guided tour of the Lloyd's building.
On Tuesday 24 April 2001, 25 people left the relative dullness of the
London and
Amersham offices to taste for themselves some of the best architecture the City has to offer. Designed by Richard Rogers and Partners (designers of, inter alia, the Pompidou Centre) and completed in 1986 after 7 years of construction, it still ranks alongside the world's other great examples of modern architecture. Built principally of steel and glass and designed to withstand an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale, the building earned Rogers the scorn of his contemporaries until an IRA bomb left other buildings shattered and the Lloyds building barely touched.
On arrival, we met the Lloyd's actuaries, including our former colleague Nigel Benbow, who worked at Barnett Waddingham on a temporary placement ending last year. After a brief talk on the role of the Lloyds actuaries from Nigel's new boss, we were on the move again, this time with an official tour guide. A few of our more senior members of the group appeared a little put out, having gone up all those floors (albeit by escalator) and settled into their chairs.
Our tour guide was a former employee of Lloyds who now looks after tours of the building, and the first attraction was everyone's favourite: the lifts. No ordinary lifts, the Lloyd's lifts are glass-walled and located on the outside of the building. Amid cries of "Let's go again!", the BW group were ushered towards the Adam Room. As its name suggests, milord Rogers was not immediately responsible for this room, which was located in the main offices of Lloyds and moved piece by piece to the new Lloyds Building by the very same firm that built it in the first place several generations ago. Some interesting artefacts in cabinets included policy documents covering all risks on an early Beatles world tour right down to the pudding-bowl haircuts.
Next stop was the main floor, centred around the famous Lutine Bell, which used to ring every time an insured ship sank somewhere around the world, but now only rings on special occasions, for instance big market news, once for bad news and twice for good. Any ships that sink are still recorded in a large logbook; luckily nothing had sunk on the day of our visit, but a Greek 3,000 tonner had gone down the previous day. Although the information on sinking ships now comes in via sophisticated satellites and computers it is still recorded in these logs using a quill and ink.
The log from 100 years ago is on display next to the current log, and the 1912 log is also on display, encased in glass, open at the page recording the foundering of the S.S. Titanic. Alongside the log is a photograph taken by one of the rescuing ships of an iceberg that maybe, just maybe, was the one that sunk the unsinkable ship!
The final part of the tour was an account of how Lloyds came into existence. Lombard merchants introduced maritime insurance to London in the 16th century and it flourished somewhat haphazardly until Edward Lloyd's coffee house evolved into the principal forum for insurers and merchants to trade risks. Lloyd wasn't a merchant or insurer but did provide the premises, regular shipping news and coffee (although we understand that moccachino wasn't an option circa 1694). The more wealthy individuals would share risk by signing their names one beneath the other on a policy along with the amounts they had agreed to cover, and thus the term "underwriter" was born. Nowadays, although Lloyds still insure most of the world's ships, they will also insure practically anything in the non-military sector, from the record-breaking Thrust SSC to sports and film stars.
With the tour over we all made our way with Nigel to the employees-only bar at the bottom of the building to drink an array of international lagers and fine wines, and for Nigel to smoke his trademark cigar. Thanks go to Nigel and our own Jug Parmar for organising an interesting and informative evening.
Barnett Waddingham, May 2001.