Lloyd's corporate vehicle Advent Capital is considering merging its two managing agencies BF Caudle and Kingsmead Underwriting, which it recently acquired from Fairfax Financial Holdings for the 2002 year of account.
Keith Thompson, chief operating officer of Advent, said: “BF Caudle and Kingsmead will operate as separate managing agencies for the 2001 year of account. But clearly it is in our thoughts as to how it would be best to integrate these two Lloyd's businesses.”
Thompson said any potential merger would not occur before the 2002 year of account and not before a full review of the relative costs and benefits had been carried out.
BF Caudle and Kingsmead will have a
combined capacity of approximately £250m for 2001, shared between three syndicates: non-marine 780 (£100m), marine 2 (£89m) and non-marine 506 (£57m).
Advent has also revealed that it is to place its £80m capacity aviation syndicate 271 into run-off after earlier deciding it would not trade for the 2001 year of account. The run-off process will be managed by Adrian Attwooll-Jones at Kingsmead.
Thompson said this decision was not related to tough aviation market conditions but to the prohibitive cost of acquiring new capacity. Syndicate 271 is 80% supported
by Heraldglen, a Lloyd's corporate member that provides capacity to Kingsmead syndicates.
Advent also released up-dated forecasts for its three syndicates for the 1998 year of account: 780 – an improved profit of up to 1.7% of capacity, 2 – a loss of 2% to 5%, 506 a loss of 9% to 11%. It said these figures were in line with the rest of the Lloyd's market.
Advent controls 55% of its £250m corporate capacity, the balance being provided by member agents and other corporate agencies.
