Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
WHEN MARINE CARGO INSURANCE BECAME CREDIT RISK INSURANCE
ABN Amro Bank v Royal & Sun Alliance
John Dunt *
Credit risk insurance has always had a special place in the history of Lloyd’s of London (“Lloyd’s”) since Harrison, an unscrupulous Lloyd’s underwriting agent, wrote credit risk insurance in his 1916/17 motor account.1 The discovery in 1923 of the enormous losses sustained by Harrison’s syndicate led directly to a prohibition on the underwriting of credit risks at Lloyd’s.2 Almost exactly a century later, in 2016, in ABN Amro Bank NV
* Visiting Fellow, Institute of Maritime Law, University of Southampton.
1. See Industrial Guarantee Corp Ltd v Corporation of Lloyd’s (1924) 19 Ll L Rep 78 for a description of how Harrison became embroiled in credit risk insurance through his motor account.
2. D Gibb, Lloyd’s of London, A Study in Individualism (London, 1957), 292. The Committee of Lloyd’s prohibited any direct underwriting of credit risks, allowing only reinsurance on restricted terms, and established the LPSO (Lloyd’s Policy Signing Office) with a manager to detect any “credit risk insurance that might be brought to him for signature”.
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