LONDON Reuters - Lloyd's of London wants to recruit a third of its workforce from ethnic minorities, it said on Friday as it tries to improve diversity in the commercial insurance market.
Nearly 50,000 people work in Lloyd's Underwriting and Broking Firms who arrange specialist risks from oil rigs to footballers' legs.
Currently, according to Lloyd's data, only 8% of the market comes from an ethnic minority group. At the Lloyd's Corporation, which oversees the market, the figure is 22%.
In a statement, Lloyd's said its ambition was that one third of all new hires should come from ethnic minority backgrounds, at all levels including leadership.
Nearly certainly, quite a lot of ethnic minorities aren't interested in insurance and not particularly interested in exploring the insurance as a career, Lloyd's Chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters.
We need to take different approaches to make ourselves more interesting. Lloyd's also said it will mandate the collection of ethnicity data across the market. Only 74% of firms provide that data in current form.
Lloyd's has sought to improve its reputation on diversity and inclusion in recent years, after admitting that the market had problems with sexual harassment and daytime drinking.