What is a Lloyd's Syndicate?

A Lloyd's syndicate is a group of one or more members of Lloyd's who provide capital and accept insurance risks together, with each member liable only for its own share. A managing agent runs each syndicate, underwriting business and handling claims on the members' behalf.

This guide is for underwriters, coverholders, MGAs and brokers working with the Lloyd's market. It covers who provides a syndicate's capital, what managing agents do, how the annual venture works, how business reaches a syndicate and what changes in market data mean for the information syndicates receive.

What a syndicate is

Lloyd's is a market in which the risks are accepted by syndicates. Lloyd's describes a syndicate as being formed by one or more members joining together to provide capital and accept insurance risks, according to its overview of the Lloyd's market.

A syndicate has no separate legal personality. When a policyholder buys cover from a syndicate, the contract is with the members who make up that syndicate for the relevant year, each taking a share of the risk in proportion to its participation. Liability is several: according to Lloyd's guidance on membership, members are not responsible for losses incurred by other members.

At 31 December 2025 the market had 103 syndicates, 7 special purpose arrangements and 6 syndicates in a box, managed by 57 managing agents, according to Lloyd's. Lloyd's chief executive's statement with the 2025 full-year results recorded seven new syndicates starting business in 2025 and a further 13 launching on 1 January 2026, and gave the market's 2025 gross written premium as £58bn.

A syndicate in a box is a route Lloyd's created for new entrants that bring innovation in product or distribution. It writes less than £100m of gross premium in its first year, writes mainly short-tail business with only incidental exposure to major catastrophe perils, and is reviewed in its third calendar year against key performance indicators agreed at the start.

Who provides the capital: corporate members and individual Names

The capital behind every syndicate comes from members of Lloyd's. Lloyd's recognises corporate members, which are entities formed solely to underwrite at Lloyd's and can be limited companies, limited liability partnerships or Scottish limited partnerships, and individual members, historically known as Names, whose liability for the risks they underwrite is unlimited.

Corporate capital now dominates. Lloyd's says corporate groups provide the majority of the market's capital, and many syndicates are backed wholly or mainly by a single corporate member owned by the same group as the managing agent. HMRC's Lloyd's Manual notes that no new individual Names have been admitted to the market, so the remaining individual members are a declining share. Lloyd's also cites around 2,500 third-party capital providers who invest through members' agents and other vehicles.

Each member's capital sits in the Lloyd's chain of security. The first link is syndicate assets: premiums are held in trust by the managing agent and pay claims first. The second is Funds at Lloyd's, the capital each member deposits, held in trust by the Corporation for policyholders and sized according to the syndicates the member backs. The third is Lloyd's central assets, including the Central Fund, available at the discretion of the Council of Lloyd's to meet valid claims that members cannot pay.

Managing agents: who runs a syndicate and what they are responsible for

Lloyd's defines a managing agent as a company set up to manage one or more syndicates on behalf of the members. The managing agent employs the underwriters, sets the syndicate's business plan, decides which risks to write and on what terms, buys the syndicate's reinsurance, handles or oversees claims and runs its finance, actuarial, compliance and risk functions.

Managing agents are regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority as well as by Lloyd's, and each syndicate's business plan is approved by Lloyd's before the start of each year of account. A managing agent can run several syndicates, for example one backed by group capital and one with third-party members, or a special purpose arrangement that takes a quota share of another syndicate's business.

Under delegated authority it is the managing agent that appoints and oversees coverholders and delegated claims administrators, signs binding authorities on the syndicate's behalf and answers to Lloyd's for the business they write.

How syndicates are identified and how the annual venture structure works

Each syndicate is identified by a number, which appears on policy documents and in the Lloyd's market directory alongside the managing agent's name.

A syndicate operates as an annual venture. Members sign up for a year of account, and each year of account is a separate underwriting venture with its own capital and its own result. A member can increase, reduce or end its participation for the next year without affecting the years it has already backed.

The requirements of the Council of Lloyd's state that every year of account must be kept open for not less than three years from its start, to allow claims to develop. A year of account is then usually closed by reinsurance to close, in which a later year of the same syndicate, or another syndicate, takes on its remaining liabilities in return for a premium. If a year cannot be closed, it stays open as a run-off year.

How business reaches a syndicate: brokers, coverholders under binding authority, and lineslips and consortia

In the open market, a Lloyd's broker presents each risk to underwriters, a lead underwriter sets terms and other syndicates and insurers follow until the risk is fully placed. This is the traditional route for large and complex commercial and specialty risks.

Through delegated authority, the syndicate gives a coverholder authority to bind risks under a binding authority. The coverholder, often a managing general agent or local broker, writes individual policies close to the customer and reports to the syndicate through bordereaux. Lloyd's reported 3,015 approved coverholders at 31 December 2025.

Two other arrangements let syndicates share business more efficiently. A line slip is an agreement under which managing agents delegate authority to another managing agent or authorised insurer for business introduced by a named Lloyd's broker. A consortium is an agreement under which managing agents delegate authority to a consortium manager, another Lloyd's managing agent, whose subscription automatically binds the followers for their pre-agreed shares.

Syndicates, managing agents and coverholders compared

Role	What it is	Who provides capital	Main responsibilities
Syndicate	One or more members accepting risk together for a year of account	Its members, corporate or individual	Carries the insurance risk and pays claims from syndicate assets
Managing agent	A company that manages one or more syndicates for the members	Carries no underwriting risk itself	Underwriting, business plan, reinsurance, claims, compliance, oversight of coverholders
Coverholder	A firm approved by Lloyd's to bind risks for syndicates under delegated authority	Carries no underwriting risk	Writing and documenting policies within the binder, collecting premium, reporting through bordereaux

What Blueprint Two and the Core Data Record mean for syndicates and the data they receive

Blueprint Two was Lloyd's programme to digitise how risks are placed, processed and settled in the London market. One of its foundations was the Core Data Record, a standard set of data fields describing a placed risk. Lloyd's published the first iteration of the Core Data Record in March 2021, developed with ACORD and based on ACORD standards, with the aim of letting standardised, quality data flow through the market. Open market North American property was the first class modelled, with delegated authority business to follow later.

The programme's direction has since changed. In his statement with the 2025 full-year results, Lloyd's chief executive said the project had not yielded the benefits originally envisioned and that Lloyd's had decided to sunset some of its original vision. He described the future of market infrastructure as an ecosystem built on common data standards and interoperability, with no single platform mandated across the market, and said that Lloyd's had a role in setting standards and organising data. The statement did not refer to the Core Data Record by name.

For syndicates, the practical point is unchanged. They receive risk, premium and claims data from many sources, and the more of it arrives in a consistent structure, the less time underwriting, delegated authority and finance teams spend rekeying and reconciling it. For delegated authority business, the Lloyd's Coverholder Reporting Standards, currently version 5.2, already set the core data set syndicates must request from coverholders and delegated claims administrators.

How software supports the flow of data from coverholders to syndicates

A syndicate's view of its delegated business is only as good as the data its coverholders send. Where a coverholder writes policies in a system that captures each risk in structured fields, its bordereaux can be generated from the policy record in the format the Coverholder Reporting Standards require. Where policies sit in documents and spreadsheets, someone has to assemble the bordereau by hand, and the syndicate receives data that needs cleaning before it can be used.

Structured data at source also lets the coverholder apply binder limits as it writes, so authority breaches are prevented at the point of quote and do not have to be found later on the bordereau. Genasys provides London Market insurance software for coverholders, MGAs and carriers that captures risk data in structured form and produces bordereaux from the policy record.