Analysis summary
What would happen to the London market if broker facilities kept expanding unchecked? This analysis answers that question with an imagined scenario set in 2031, in which Aon Client Treaty's share of the London order has passed 50% and facilities have reshaped the market around them. It pictures a market where brokers capture the gains through enhanced brokerage and faster placement, while carriers fight an increasingly brutal contest for lead and follow lines, syndicates consolidate into a handful of large followers with no lead capability, and London market employment falls sharply. It delivers fast insight on why the arrival of the soft market may prove the tipping point, whether the Corporation could realistically check facility growth once dependency sets in, and what London stands to gain and lose if syndication is pushed to its extreme.Subscribe to get comprehensive access to our exclusive analysis in the full platform.
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The future is not set, but it can sometimes be illuminating to imagine the different paths it could take and what one of them could mean for our market.
It’s 2031, Aon Client Treaty’s share of the London order just ticked past the 50% mark as long-time facilities sceptic Richard Brindle added a 3% line.
The Fidelis Partnership joins 14 other markets on the placement, writing a combined $8bn.
If ACT were a carrier, it would sit alongside Zurich, Convex and Canopius in the top 10, with plausible designs on reaching the top five.
Aon has benefited from a surge in enhanced brokerage resulting from increasing the facility’s line, and increased efficiency due to more automatic placement, fuelling organic growth and margin expansion. Clients have benefited from better pricing driven by higher competitive tension, and improved service as a result of faster placement.
Carriers meanwhile have succumbed to vicious over-competition as a result of the reduced open market order.
The struggle to lead business has become a knife fight between carriers that argue that leading business is the cornerstone of their stock-picking business model.
The fight for follow lines has become even more brutal, with increasingly steep discounts to lead pricing offered or leader fees paid.
Even those wedded to stock-picking have been forced to pick up shares on some of the facilities due to damage to key distribution relationships from year after year of declinatures.
And while Aon has gone further and faster than its rivals, Marsh FastTrack is hovering around the 40% mark. Willis Gemini just ticked past 35%.
And the wholesale brokers all have large and growing follow-form facilities that provide cornerstone capacity on their placements.
The Corporation of Lloyd’s theoretically has the ability to check Aon and the other brokers by placing tighter restrictions around facilitisation in business plans.
But in the real world, ACT and FastTrack are too important for the Corporation to intervene. The dependency has become so great that business plans with increased shares have to be waved through.
The number of jobs in the London market has fallen by 10,000, with roles down sharply in underwriting and an increasing number of broking placement roles being eliminated or moved to lower cost centres.
Another mid-sized Lloyd’s syndicate just announced that it is cutting 30% of its workforce as it fights to survive.
Others have already folded.
Seven Lloyd’s syndicates have gone into run-off as soft market underwriting losses were compounded by unmanageable expenses.
This included the posterchild of Lloyd’s cycle management MAP. The business wasn't forced into the move like others by capital withdrawal – its principals just followed through on their long-time threat (typically considered flippant) to cease underwriting if conditions became unattractive enough.
Twelve other syndicates have merged into others through a consolidation wave as they sought to strengthen their competitive position and achieve economies of scale. This rolling up of syndicates has created three super-followers, each writing $4bn+ of business, but with no lead capabilities in any line.
Once London's superpower, syndication has been pushed to its extreme, totally commoditizing capacity.
The wave of criticism directed at London that started early in the soft market, led by Chubb’s Evan Greenberg, has only intensified.
EC3 is cited again and again on earnings calls in New York, Bermuda and beyond as an aggravating factor around industry underwriting indiscipline – although of course the Lloyd's arms of many of these businesses are also quietly putting down lines on these facilities.
London has been compensated by surging market share. Aon Client Treaty's premiums written have increased more than five-fold since 2025 as the broker pushed more business through.
Growth has been easy to come by for those happy to absorb it via facilities.
Looking back, it is clear that the advent of the soft market in 2025 was the tipping point, as ACT breached what had previously been thought of as a 25% ceiling and a multitude of other brokers minted facilities.
London's capacity hasn't been as crucial to the P&C ecosystem and its clients in decades.
But part of what made the London market special has been eroded, and brokers – winners of the competitive race for decades – have won another major victory.
By Adam McNestrie
17 August, 2026
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