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Lloyd's of London losses more than $800M in 2011

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Lloyd's of London losses more than $800M in 2011

LONDON—Lloyd's of London's £516 million ($818.8 million) loss for 2011 was “not a bad result” in the context of record catastrophe losses, said Lloyd's CEO Richard Ward on Wednesday.

Lloyd's reported Wednesday that it incurred total net claims of £12.9 billion ($20.5 billion) in 2011, including £4.6 billion ($7.3 billion) in catastrophe losses.

Mr. Ward said last year was “absolutely the costliest on record” for Lloyd's in terms of catastrophe losses, but that the loss represented less than 1% of Lloyd's assets.

“In the context of $20 billion worth of losses, in the context of catastrophe claims of $7.4 billion—to report a loss of $800 million to the market is a pretty good result,” said Mr. Ward. “Not a bad result in the context of the major losses we had to deal with.”

He said Lloyd's is well-capitalized. “We continued to build our capital strength throughout 2011. Members' assets are sitting at near record. There will be no material impact on the central fund.”

Lloyd's £516 million loss for 2011 compares with a 2010 profit of £2.20 billion ($3.49 billion) for 2010. Its combined ratio deteriorated to 106.8% from 93.3% the previous year. Total resources of Lloyd's and its members at year-end stood at £58.87 billion ($93.42 billion) compared with £55.23 billion ($84.64 billion) a year earlier.

Mr. Ward said a rate increase “would be nice.” He noted that the global insurance industry had to pay out more than $100 billion in catastrophe-related claims last year, and “that capital has to be replaced, and the way you do that is to increase rates.”

“It would be nice over the next few months that we do see these green shoots of recovery in rates continue.”