Visiting Lloyd’s: A Moment of Historical Reflection

I last visited the Lloyd’s marketplace over 14 years ago during my time at Chubb & Son. It remains a remarkable institution where people come together daily to underwrite complex risks and support the global economy.

Lloyd’s has a rich history, but it is also connected to the transatlantic slave trade. During my visit years ago, I don’t recall seeing any exhibits on the market’s role in insuring slavery-related risks.

The market has made efforts to acknowledge its legacy through curated exhibits and historical reflections. While these initiatives are modest, they are significant. I do not recall any exhibit addressing the market’s role in insuring risks associated with slavery, but I understand that Lloyd’s is now more openly reflecting on this legacy.

Lloyd’s didn’t only insure ships and goods during the height of the slave trade — they insured people. Enslaved Africans, treated as financial assets, were reduced to cargo and line items on insurance documents. Their lives commodified, their humanity stripped away in the pursuit of profit.

Manifest Description:

To be delivered:

One hundred Negro Slaves on account and risqué of the

Royal British Assiento Company

…. being marked and numbered as in the margin, and to be delivered in

the like good order… to Anthony Walden Esq, the said

Company’s Factor there…

Capt. John Wyllis’ Bill Lading, dated the 6th March 1738, for 100 Negroes on board his Brigantine “Sa Clara” for Havana.

The foundations of this institution are linked to what can only be described as the industrialized dehumanization of millions. It is a truth that should neither be overlooked nor sanitized. And as we continue to shape the future of our industry, we must do so with a clear-eyed view of the past.

Somewhere in the archives lie those chilling documents — insurance policies that coldly inventoried human “cargo” alongside sugar and tobacco — that create a visceral reaction. Each insurance cover represents not just a transaction, but the systematic reduction of people to economic units to be insured against loss.

These weren’t just business documents; they were the bureaucratic machinery that made the Middle Passage financially viable. The accuracy with which insurers assessed the “value” of human lives highlights the clinical efficiency of a system designed to profit from human suffering.

This history doesn’t diminish with familiarity. If anything, it becomes heavier with each visit, a reminder that the modern financial system often rest on foundations we’d rather forget. Yet it’s precisely this discomfort that we must carry with us — not as guilt, but as memory, as responsibility, as a commitment to never let the sanitized language of commerce obscure the human cost of profit.

As a descendant of enslaved Africans brought to Jamaica through the horrors of the Middle Passage — and as someone who believes deeply in the potential of the insurance industry to serve as a force for good — I find myself navigating a profound tension.

As I walk in central London, I do so carrying with me the voices of the uncounted, the uncompensated, the unnamed — those whose lives are reduced to inventory on insurance ledgers. Their humanity was stripped away, their existence recorded not in remembrance, but in risk calculations.

I often reflect on what my ancestors would think if they knew I walk the same streets of London that once commodified their lives. It’s a moment of reckoning, reminding me of history’s weight and our responsibility to confront it honestly.

[Link to my previous reflection on slavery’s abolition and its economic legacy: https://medium.com/p/6cafaae62abb]

All views shared are personal and made independently of any professional affiliations.