1. A London insurance mart where individual underwriters gather to quote rates and write insurance on a wide variety of risks.
2. A voluntary association of merchants, shipowners, underwriters, and brokers formed not to write policies but instead to issue a notice of an endeavor to members who may individually underwrite a policy by assuming shares of the total risk of insuring a client. • The names of the bound underwriters and the attorney-in-fact appear on the policy.
— Also termed Lloyd’s; London Lloyd’s. [Cases: Insurance 1220. C.J.S. Insurance § 1709.]
“[I]t is not the corporation of Lloyd’s which undertakes insurance risks and enters into policies of insurance; that is done by the individual members of Lloyd’s, acting usually in groups or ‘syndicates,’ which are not partnerships or companies but merely fortuitous aggregations of, say, five, ten, or more members represented in common by one underwriting agent having power to bind them each individually and separately to contracts of insurance. These members are frequently referred to as ‘names’; and their agent is said to ‘write’ for them. If, as is commonly the case, he also is a member of Lloyd’s, then he will ‘write’ for himself, too.” 2 Stephen’s Commentaries on the Laws of England 237 (L. Crispin Warmington ed., 21st ed. 1950).
