Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has been a top priority at Lloyd’s of London since 2015, when former CEO Inga Beale – a pioneer of DE&I in the insurance industry – kick started Dive In, the global festival for diversity and inclusion in insurance.
Since 2015, Dive In has grown from a small four-day festival around the Lloyd’s building in London, to a global festival with events in more than 30 countries reaching over 30,000 attendees. Such rapid growth is confirmation of the fact that, historically, the insurance industry has been sorely lacking in DE&I, but change is afoot as business leaders worldwide start to realize the benefits.
Marc Lipman, president of Lloyd’s Canada and attorney-in-fact for Lloyd’s Underwriters, presented DE&I as a potential solution to the insurance industry’s quite significant talent shortage. If companies want to attract top talent to the insurance industry, they need to support diverse workplaces and cultures.
“Diversity is one of Lloyd’s core strategies because we need it to be,” said Lipman. “We need it to be [a priority] not only because it’s obviously the right thing to do, but because Lloyd’s is in a huge global fight for talent, and we can’t afford to overlook anyone because of their gender, their colour, their ethnic background, and so on. We absolutely need the best talent, which means we have to be able to attract the best.”
Lipman pointed out that anyone who has visited Lloyd’s in the past and strolled around the London EC3 insurance area probably would have noticed they were in a “very white male dominated environment”. And it’s fair to say that the London market, and its historic lack of diverse representation, could be seen as a microcosm of the insurance industry as a whole. Almost all insurance markets, Canada included, had a white male dominated demographic until quite recently.
“That had to change,” stressed Lipman, “and I’m very pleased that the corporation of Lloyd’s has reached gender parity […] and we’ve now become very focused on the next great challenge of [improving] ethnic diversity […] trying to open up and ensure that Lloyd’s and the entire marketplace is more attractive and welcoming to colleagues and communities [of all racial and ethnic backgrounds], so that we can benefit from all of their talents and their diversity.”
Lloyd’s has put together a very comprehensive plan to improve DE&I within the marketplace and the wider insurance industry. It starts with measurement, according to Lipman, and businesses / units figuring out where they’re at in the DE&I journey, and what actions they need to take in order to become more diverse.
“We’ve shared [our plan] with the entire Lloyd’s marketplace and globally,” said Lipman. “It’s on our website, brokerages can take a look at it, see what they like about it, what they think makes sense and if they want to use it, but it’s all out there.”
Furthermore, through Inclusion@Lloyd’s, whose mission is to help build more inclusive workplace cultures across insurance, the annual Dive In festival, and several DE&I-focused employee resource groups (ERG’s) within Lloyd’s corporation, the market provides actionable data, information, and advice to help companies make positive change.
“We’re working very hard,” Lipman added. “DE&I is very sensitive, frankly, for Lloyd’s in particular. We have a history that dates back to the 17th and 18th century, about being involved and facilitating some of the slave trade out of Europe. It’s something that we categorically apologize for. It’s something that we’re taking ownership of.
“Lloyd’s has hired an independent archivist to go through all of the Lloyd’s records, to make sure that they’re all made available publicly, [and] that they tell the story in a very accurate and objective manner that Lloyd’s won’t put a spin on. We own that history, and we can only try and do better moving forward. So, DE&I is an absolute imperative for us now.”
