Underwritten Weekly

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Every Sunday, I write my team a (hopefully) motivational email. Here’s this weeks:

Subject: Mind your own business

If Cuthbert Heath had just minded his own damn business like everyone else, <Product Name> would have just one class to onboard and I’d have my Sundays back. But no. He had to bloody well go and invent everything and now there’s <number of classes>. So if anyone is, he’s to blame for these increasingly ridiculous emails.

Cuthbert Heath walked into Lloyd’s in 1880, aged 21, and found a market that only did one thing: marine insurance. Ships. Cargo. That was it. That was Lloyd’s.

Heath looked at that and thought: why?

When someone asked him, half-jokingly, to insure a property against burglary, he didn’t laugh. He uttered two words that ought to be carved into the walls of One Lime Street, because they changed our world forever: “Why not?“

Then he did it again. And again. And again. Burglary. Earthquake. Hurricane. Aviation. Employer’s liability. Credit risk. Smallpox – but only if you’d been vaccinated, because even in the 1890s Cuthbert Heath understood moral hazard.

He collected maps of a hundred years of hurricane paths in the West Indies. He paid for historical earthquake records from South America, China, and India. He built a little black rating book that became so famous other underwriters asked to borrow it. And he lent it to them – because he’d rather his competitors priced properly than undercut him through ignorance.

Rumours that <CUO Name> plans to do the same with <Product Name> are believed to be wide of the mark. Rumours that I’d tell other underwriters what it says for a few pints are believed to be depressingly accurate.

Then San Francisco happened. April 1906. An 8.25 earthquake, fires that consumed the city. Our hero Cuthbert was the leading Lloyd’s earthquake underwriter. The bill was huge: over £50,000,000 in 1906. I’ll let you work out how much that is in today’s money, because we established last week I don’t do maths in these emails.

His instruction to his San Francisco agent: pay all of our policyholders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies.

Not “check the wordings.“
Not “let’s see what we’re liable for.“
Not “what does the policy actually say?“
Pay them. All of them. In full. Right now.

Saving cities. Rebuilding nations. We don’t tend to talk about it, because when you work in this market it’s considered a “business as usual” function. For any other industry this would be mind-blowing. For us, it’s just another Tuesday.

That single decision built Lloyd’s reputation in America, and the world. It’s arguably the reason our market has the venerable and illustrious reputation it does today. It’s the reason shipping companies didn’t take up Trump’s offer to insure vessels sailing through Hormuz. Because they know that when something goes wrong, and it always does, a presidential press release doesn’t cut it. You need a market that always pays out. A market that has always paid out. A market that will always pay out. You need us.

So why am I telling you this?

Because Cuthbert Heath didn’t look at new risks and see problems. He saw the entire point of what we do. The market exists to say “why not?” – to find a way to price something nobody else will touch, and to pay when it goes wrong.

He didn’t do it by guessing. He collected data obsessively. He researched. He built tools – maps, rating books, probability statistics – that let him take risks others wouldn’t, not because he was reckless, but because he understood them better than anyone else in The Room.

I’ve toyed with you enough, time to admit we both know where this is going…

That’s what <Product Name> is. Not a replacement for the underwriter. A better set of maps. A modern black book. The thing that lets our underwriters say “why not?” with confidence, because the data is already there, the noise is already filtered, and the work in front of them is the work that deserves them.

Every single one of you is Cuthbert Heath. You’re building the tools that let this market do what it was always meant to do – say yes to risks that matter, pay when it counts, and move faster than anyone else in The Room.

I appreciate I’ve just named you all after a Victorian with a hearing problem. I stand by it.

Your name is Cuthbert. Wear it well.

Have a good week.
Rob