No move will be made at Names' expense, spokesman claims
Lloyd's chairman Sax Riley is expected to call for changes to the Lloyd's Act of 1982 later this week, when he releases the latest version of his plans to modernise the Lloyd's Market.
A Lloyd's spokesman said: "The proposals will talk about the modernisation generally, and [say] that in order to achieve this we need to make changes to the Lloyd's Act."
He denied newspaper reports that the move would be an attempt to improve the position of the market's corporate investors at Names' expense.
However, one of the key proposals for the reform of the market is expected to be its plan to resolve the problem of the 75 unnaturally open syndicate years.
It is thought that several thousand inactive unlimited liability Names, who do not wish to remain as Lloyd's members, are waiting for their syndicates to close their books on certain years of account. Until the syndicates do that, the Names remain members at Lloyd's.
Neil Coulson, a partner at accountancy firm Littlejohn Frazer, said: "These Names need to be offered attractive reinsurance-to-close quotes on those run-off syndicates... that would take a large number of these people's potential voting powers away from them."
Coulson added that this would be attractive to Lloyd's and to the inactive Names, because they were not deliberately hanging on as Lloyd's members.
