Lloyd's announced a loss of GBP 0.9 billion (pre-tax) for 2020, driven by GBP 3.4 billion net incurred COVID-19 losses, which contributed 13.3% to the market's combined ratio of 110.3%.

"Excluding COVID-19 claims, the market's combined ratio has shown substantial improvement at 97.0%, down from 102.1% in 2019", Lloyd's representatives pointed out in a statement.

At the same time, excluding COVID-19 losses, the market delivered an underwriting profit of GBP 0.8 billion, "demonstrating a significant improvement in Lloyd's underlying performance. This is supported by 7.8 percentage point improvement of the underlying combined ratio (attritional loss ratio, expense ratio and prior year releases) which has dropped to 87.3%".

Gross written premiums of GBP 35.5 billion (2019: GBP 35.9 billion) represent a 1.2% reduction over the same period in 2019 while the 2020 expense ratio saw a 1.5% improvement dropping to 37.2% (2019: 38.7%).