Insurance exchange Lloyd’s of London closed its underwriting room for the entire day (March 13) to test the market’s resilience amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Invoking its emergency trading protocol for 24 hours allowed Lloyd’s to stress test its business continuity plan in the event of a shutdown. The exercise was aimed at gaining valuable information on the real-life effectiveness of the protocol.

The centuries-old marketplace, meanwhile, also used this time to deep-clean the underwriting room as well as all public areas in the Lloyd’s building.

In addition, Placing Platform Limited (PPL) earlier this week stated: “At PPL, we are committed to providing the safest environment for employees while maintaining the continuity of services to our customers.

“Along with Lloyd’s & Ebix, we are closely monitoring the situation and we have crisis and business continuity plans in place should we need to invoke them and, as with all market businesses, have already implemented various actions to follow the latest government guidance.”

PPL assured that the platform, which is delivered as a publicly available web portal, will be a vital trading tool in ensuring continued customer service in case a large number of people have to work remotely.

“There are no technical limitations (i.e. browser plugin prerequisites, whitelisting, etc.) that would prevent the platform from being accessed directly by a remote workforce,” it said.