Biba 2026: Government should support brokers in developing London market abroad – Croft

Rather than solely focusing on attracting capital to the London insurance market, the government’s financial services strategy should do more to support brokers in developing new business across the world.

This is according to Christopher Croft, chief executive at the London and International Insurance Brokers’ Association (Liiba), who sat down with Insurance Times at the 2026 Biba Conference to discuss what he thinks the government can do to support the industry.

Croft explained his misgivings about the government’s current approach to supporting the London market.

“Our disappointment with the government is around the financial services strategy and how insurer focused it is. If all they’re going to do is introduce policies that attract more capital to London, then the only thing that will achieve is to depress the prices,” he said.

“They need to do things to help us generate the demand for that capacity. They seem quite reluctant to do that.”

Opportunity abroad

A more holistic approach, Croft felt, and one that would pay dividends over a longer timeframe, would be for the government to support brokers in developing foreign business, with a particular focus on traditionally underserved areas.

He said: “We would say that we don’t need help developing business in North America, we have lots of people in our community that are very good at that, but there are areas of the world where we’ve not been so successful.

“Average insurance penetration in Latin America is under 4%, and constitutes 2% of London market business, so those are two data points that will make people think there could be an opportunity there.”

Government support for business development abroad could be pivotal, given the diplomatic ties that could be leveraged to help accelerate relationship building.

For Croft, the partnership is clear: “What we say to the government is we’ve got expertise in business development and risk management, you’ve got the trade commissioners, the embassy network and the access to governments.

“What we’d like them to do is run a series of events in the embassies in various countries where you invite some local risk managers and some local brokers, we send some of our members and it creates the connection.”

He concluded: “America has had 140 years of London brand development, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake onwards, so we need to try and create the same process in areas of the world where we’ve not traditionally been the go-to insurance partner – government can help with that.”