The Room

The Room

The focal point of the Lloyd's building at One Lime Street is the large Underwriting Room, which houses the famous Lutine Bell. This bell was salvaged from a captured French frigate which sank off the Dutch coast in 1799 whilst carrying a cargo of gold and silver bullion. The cargo, valued then at around £1 million, was insured by Lloyd’s underwriters who paid the claim in full.
The bell has since become a symbol of good and bad news – it is rung once for good news and twice for bad news.
The Room is Lloyd's main underwriting area and it works very much like a street market. The daily face-to-face interaction of underwriters and brokers creates an unparallel choice of insurance solutions for their clients. The underwriters at Lloyd's insure some of the world's toughest risks, such as offshore drilling platforms, space risks or even flying ten elephants across the Altlantic.