phogel from germany, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I joined a prestigious insurance broker, Matthews Wrightson, straight from school back in 1967, the tag ‘& at Lloyd’s’ was always the gilt on the gingerbread for a broker.
Old man Wrightson was still in the chair & EG Gordon Henry was managing director. A fearsome character to an eighteen year old. I was one of the first of that now popular genre a ‘management trainee’ I reported direct to David Rowland no less. The sort of appointment only available now to an Oxbridge graduate sporting a rugger blue.
The concept was three months at each department, fire, auto, marine, Home, aviation & life. You then made your career choice. Somehow I slipped in to the investment side.
A word here about recruitment policy which seems prima facie very snobby to the outsider, but bare in mind the motto of Lloyd’s brokers is uberrima fides. Utmost good faith, for those who have no Latin, or like me stared out of the window when they should have been learning it.
The underwriters have their boxes on the floor in the Lloyd’s building & brokers wander about touting their risk to experts in the field who ‘underwrite’ literally with their signature on behalf of their syndicate.
The syndicates are made up of ‘names’. They bear the risk, in my day with unlimited liability. You could literally lose your house.
Much business basically transacted on a handshake, being a ‘name’ was socially impressive.
One has to appreciate the necessity of everyone knowing each other, if not personally, by association.
So the snobbery had a purpose.
In my day the senior management were wartime officers, the middle management national service officers, youngsters were expected to play rugger, not soccer that was for back office types.
A military association was de rigueur, in some format. Short service or Territorial commissions were favoured, university degrees were regarded with suspicion, as they should be today.
Public school was preferred or at least one of the great London Grammar schools.
My box ticking just crept in, JUST.
Some chaps were rugger internationals, usually Scottish.
There were some impoverished aristocrats flogging some Insurance to other impoverished aristocrats presumably on commission
Eccentric & charming they were.
You see you had to be a ‘proper chap’ or the system would have collapsed.
Different now with limited liability, Chinese syndicates, a new space age building (well, new to me).
Matthews Wrightson was based in Fountains House, Fenchurch St. In 1967 the tallest building in The City at thirteen stories !
Overtaken whilst I was there by the Kleinwort Benson building at twenty four & demolished a few years ago.
The City then was crammed with proper pubs, sawdust on the floor & ale from wooden barrels & dried up sandwiches under a glass dome which nobody ate. A few wine bars with better food above my pay grade (£800pa).
My daily lunch was often spaghetti bolognese & chips (3/6) paid for with luncheon vouchers in Cullum St.
Although I once got an expense chit to give lunch to the Hungarian piano maestro Peter Frankle, we insured his hands, Lord knows how that happened or what he made of a schoolboy giving him lunch.
Interestingly just eight years later as an executive director of the English Sinfonia Orchestra I was asked to host John Lill, a great celebrity at the time, we were well matched, A Nottingham pub crawl on New Year’s Eve !
Twice a week my evening meal was egg & chips in the canteen of the South East London College where I attended Chartered Insurance exam lectures. Day release had not been invented.
So 9.00am to 5.00pm to The City on the Dartford loop line, Tuesday night at the drill hall, Saturday rugby, Sunday rugby counter-intuitively for a side offering a higher standard peppered with county players keeping fit.
Bowler hats were compulsory (top hats for the Stock Exchange chaps), the company limo was a glorious 1962 Daimler, Rolls
Royces were considered vulgar.
Where is Lloyd’s today?
Still operationally sound, in spite of the ups & downs that come with the international insurance market.
Chief Executive John Neal plays the ESG game, ethnic minorities welcomed albeit as security staff, dress down Friday which women hate & a useful target quota for women employees because everyone knows young women could never make it on merit bless their hearts.
Of course in my day we had typing pools & clerks, so no shortage of the fair sex. Where’s my CBE ? You can almost hear the poor man beg. Get a few transgenders is my advice.
Notwithstanding the usual corporate wokery the institution survives & prospers.
Not a bad record for a concept born in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house in 1688.
I wish it well fifty years on.
© Godfrey Bloom 2024 – Godfrey Bloom Online
