THE BOOK

REGULATION

A technical and qualitative comparison between the regulation of insurance companies (in various jurisdictions) and self-regulation at LOL, chronologically, by issue, etc. Regulation, supervision of LOL outside GB; LOL self-regulation

RECORD-KEEPING

Record-keeping of assets, liabilities, commitments, policies, certificates, covers, binders, files, correspondence, by leaders and followers, managing agencies and brokers, policyholders, LOL centrally; non-disclosure by managing agencies to members' agencies etc.

UNDERWRITING

Classes; expertise; incidental non-marine; LMX; LMX spiral; underwriting reinsurance; risk assessment; terms; wordings; exclusions; ambiguity; leaders and followers; brokers and broking; coverholders; surplus lines; premium underwriting; premium income limits

INSOLVENCY

Reserving; general and specific reserving; trust funds; Ponzi premium underwriting; Ponzi proxy reserving; pyramid scheme underwriting; reverse-pyramid claims handling; acute and chronic insufficiency; insurance insolvency procedures in companies and at LOL

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

The author has accessed, including by Freedom of Information process, official documents revealing how badly "self-regulating" Lloyd's of London was understood, mis-understood, supervised, regulated and managed. 

And how and why it came about that US state securities and insurance regulators and other officials, if (rather than just faking it) genuinely fully informed about LOL and genuinely cognisant of the whole truth of exactly what was going on (exactly how did that uniquely privileged situation come about?), did and said what they did at the time.

And other documents.

INSIDER RECOLLECTIONS

First-hand accounts from underwriters, claims managers, brokers, lawyers, investors, doctors, coroners, private investigators, widows, policyholders, accountants, insolvency practitioners, corporate counsel, regulators, politicians, legislators, shareholders, victims of asbestosis, air pollution, soil pollution, water pollution and chemical, biological etc. health hazards, etc.

LAWYERS AND CASES

Reported and not-reported English, American and other litigation, arbitration brought by and against LOL and its components by its investors and policyholders; the specialist and not-so-specialist lawyers on both sides who fought, won and lost them; teardown of Briggs, Henderson v Merrett, Jaffray and other key English and American judicial decisions; 'Deep-discount' confidential 'take it while you can' short-change settlements, etc. 

Not every professional player was genuinely fully informed and genuinely cognisant of the whole truth of exactly what was going on.

DEEP FINANCIAL ANALYSIS

Using the latest forensic technology including AI, this project will process, aggregate, correlate and cross-reference insurance, reinsurance, reinsurance-to-close, corporate and other published accounts, figures and statements from a variety of commercial, legal, regulatory and other sources. When intelligently expounded, none of it is difficult, complicated or abstruse. It's largely a matter of inheritance.

KEY ISSUES AND EVENTS

For brokers, coverholders, underwriters, claims handlers, self-regulators, regulators, accountants: record-keeping; reinsurance; reinsurance to close; Equitas reinsurance to close; open years; the LMX spiral; LOL scandals, disciplinary proceedings; key financial, legal and insurance events of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s; US tort reform; lost and found policies and certificates; tax regimes; self-reinsurance; stop loss, etc.

EXPERIENCES AND HORROR STORIES OF INVESTORS

How they were recruited, retained, informed, misinformed, threatened, menaced, persecuted, traumatised, swindled, impoverished; how their own lawyers defrauded them by giving criminally wrong information and advice on criminally wrong representations of competence (or was it W4 with all of them?); unlimited liability; the mini-Name

LIABILITIES, CLAIMS

on old-year long-tail policies; US state and local governments, polluting corporations, etc.; claims handling at, by and on behalf of LOL; run-off agencies; actionable and not-actionable good-faith and bad-faith claims handling; the performance of corporate counsel and outside specialist lawyers dishonestly professing knowledge and competence in the relevant workings of LOL (or was it W4?).

LAWYERS, JUDGES, REGULATORS, SUPERVISORS, ETC.

Exactly what went right and wrong technically for LOL, investors and policyholders? Who and where were the real experts available to investors and policyholders? Why did otherwise capable lawyers and judges get LOL so badly wrong (If W4, deliberately)? Why no malpractice and negligence lawsuits by investors and claimant policyholders? What were securities and insurance regulators doing throughout? What, and where, when, how and how come, was ever a genuine case of W4? What about policyholders' corporate counsel?

INTERACTIVE

Follow key inner-, back- and front-office issues from origination to conclusion using interactive AI-powered multi-dimensional maps, charts, accounts; investor, policyholder, lawyer and other dynamics and demographics; simulations; animations; online games (Hunt The Policies; Save The World's Insurance System, Let's Sell Blank Cheque No-Records No-Reserves Toxic Tort Insurance, etc.); interactive dynamic maps of American insured asbestos, pollution, health hazard liabilities etc.  

EXHIBITS

Insurance and reinsurance documents of the period; geological surveys of polluted land; lungs of asbestosis victims; accounts, reserves, manipulations of insurance and reinsurance underwriters; reinsurance of his own risks by the original insurer; investor documents; policyholder documents; Equitas documents etc.; relevant tax regimes; natural and man-made insurance mega-losses etc.

CASE STUDIES

Brokers and coverholders who sold Lloyd's of London insurance to corporate and official America; underwriters who sold blank-cheque insurance policies and didn't keep records; LOL high-ups who propagated patently false information about how LOL worked and its liabilities; insurance regulators who (knowing or not knowing the full story) didn't regulate; politicians and legislators who didn't pay attention; specialist insurance lawyers who didn't know the subject; real people at all levels who lied about understanding LOL and said and wrote gibberish about it (and who, if genuinely fully informed and fully cognisant, acted dishonestly); real-world victimised regular folk: Erin Brockovich was only as good as the polluter's liability coverage, insured and reinsured (often by the same people) at and by LOL.

THE INNER WORKINGS

The secrecy; the obfuscation and misinformation; the neglect and irresponsibility; the concealments and misrepresentations; the secret recruitment campaigns; the government and other official connections; duty-self-interest conflicts; insider privileges and rogue insiders; self-regulation; the English and American fraud allegations against LOL; the curious indifference of criminal law enforcement… The absolute impossibility of any lay person ever credibly describing exactly how LOL worked; W4 syndrome