For most UK brokers, AmTrust is the name behind warranty, legal expenses and specialty lines. Fewer will know it is also a City landlord - and that it now wants to build very, very high.
The New York-based specialty insurer is drawing up plans to knock down Exchequer Court, its office block at 33 St Mary Axe, and replace it with a tower of around 70 storeys and roughly 300 metres, according to reports this week. The site sits a few doors from the Gherkin and a short stroll from Lloyd’s. It is also where AmTrust’s UK carrier, AmTrust Specialty Limited, has its registered office.
AmTrust has owned the building since early 2017, when it paid £105m for it. Today it is a stone-fronted block of around six floors, so the plans would take the site from mid-rise to supertall in one leap.
The man holding the pencil is Sir George Iacobescu. The Romanian-born engineer spent 36 years helping turn Canary Wharf from abandoned docks into London’s second financial district, before stepping down as chair of Canary Wharf Group in July 2024. His successor in that role, fittingly enough for this audience, was Sir Nigel Wilson, the former Legal & General chief executive.
The new building would offer around 1m sq ft of office space. A public consultation is expected to open this month, with a formal planning application to the City of London Corporation pencilled in for early 2027. If it gets the green light, AmTrust is aiming to have the tower finished by 2033.
Chaya Cooperberg, AmTrust’s chief people and communications officer, pitched the scheme as a statement of intent. “This is a long-term commitment to London we are making,” she said, adding that the company expects the project to help ease the City’s shortage of top-tier office space.
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The property play comes less than a year after AmTrust redrew its own organisational chart. In December 2025 it closed a deal with Blackstone Credit & Insurance that moved seven of its MGAs and fee businesses - Arc Legal among them - into a standalone platform, ANV Group Holdings. AmTrust kept a significant stake and signed a ten-year deal to keep providing capacity. ANV has since been gearing up for a UK growth push at Arc Legal. Those curious about the wider group can find more on our AmTrust company profile.
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At about 300 metres, the Exchequer Court tower would fall just short of the Shard, usually quoted at 309.6 metres to its tip. It would also be a near neighbour of One London - the 74-storey, 309.6-metre tower formerly known as 1 Undershaft, which is rising on the site of Aviva’s old St Helen’s headquarters. That scheme won City approval in December 2024, with construction due to start in 2028 and completion also targeted for 2033. If both go to plan, the insurance district could gain two of the UK’s tallest buildings in the same year.
The timing demonstrates the insurance sector’s commitment to the City. Much of the London market has spent the post-pandemic years deciding whether to stay put in EC3, and the answer has largely been yes. Lloyd’s has committed to One Lime Street until at least 2035, with an option to stay to 2040. BMS moved its London headquarters into the Gherkin from 1 September, and the Chartered Insurance Institute swapped the Walkie Talkie for Old Broad Street earlier this year. Clear Group has also moved its London HQ to Monument Street, and the wider question of why staff are back at their desks is shaping how much space firms think they need.
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The City Corporation is broadly on the developers’ side. Its City Plan 2040 calls for at least 1.2 million square metres of net additional office space between 2021 and 2040, with the eastern tower cluster around St Mary Axe expected to do much of the heavy lifting.
A 300-metre tower is not just a planning story, there’s plenty of opportunity for more insurance business. It is a long list of risks that someone has to price, from construction all-risks and delay in start-up to latent defects once the building is up. Construction underwriters have long complained that they arrive after the big risk decisions are made; a scheme still at consultation stage is a chance to get in early.
Then there is the shadow it casts. Rights of light are a private property right that sits apart from planning permission, so neighbours can still object after the City says yes. In practice, most of these disputes in the Square Mile end in negotiated compensation rather than court, and rights-of-light indemnity cover is a familiar part of the toolkit on City developments.
None of that will be tested until the consultation closes and the application lands. But AmTrust has made its intentions clear: it is not just staying in the insurance district, it wants to tower over it.
