Lloyd's chief executive Nick Prettejohn said the FSA's deadline for contract certainty across the market will be demanding.

Speaking at the FSA insurance conference, Prettejohn said: "The FSA has set us a demanding deadline to register meaningful achievement - the end of 2006, which effectively means that we have to demonstrate real progess by early 2005. We are under no illusion about the seriousness of this deadline."

He said to speed up the claims process needed a "behavourial change" from underwriters and brokers in the insurance transaction.

"All should resist the temptation to compress the period of negotiation in the hope of getting better terms and conditions, or the temptation to tolerate ambiguity because it may prove advantageous at the point of claim."

Prettejohn called again for commission disclosure to be mandatory across the Lloyd's and London market.

He added that Lloyd's and the industry as a whole should lobby the government more effectively in the future.

"Given the attention that Spitzer and others have brought to our industry it is clear that we will have to work hard to ensure the government's paymasters - the electorate - have a more positive view of what we do."