Lloyd’s stays perfect in soccer prediction business

Score one for the underwriters.

Lloyd’s of London outsmarted the bookies and the world’s soccer ranking experts when it successfully predicted that France would win soccer’s FIFA World Cup in Moscow on Sunday. The 4-2 victory over Croatia also kept in place Lloyd’s unbeaten record in calling the outcome of the tournament.

Before the World Cup began a month ago, Lloyd’s and its research partner, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, ranked the 32 teams taking part based on the collective insurable value of their players.

With an insurable value of £1.4 billion ($1.88 billion), France had the most valuable team, despite being placed 7th in FIFA’s official ranking of teams prior to the tournament. FIFA’s top-ranked team, Germany, crashed out in the group stage of the competition.

The bookies’ favorite, Brazil, did better but couldn’t make it past Belgium in the quarter-final stage of the competition.

Lloyd’s maintains its perfect record in predicting the winner of the World Cup having correctly picked Germany as the 2014 winner, the first year it released its insurance ranking of the teams.

Next stop for the underwriters is Qatar, where the next World Cup kicks off in 2022.