The Shadow of Great Britain-Chapter 681 - 332: The Big Hand in Financial City

London, Westminster, 4 Whitehall, Greater London Police Department.

Arthur sat at his desk, staring at the report listing the shareholders of the George Wilkinson Company for a long time without shifting his gaze.

To say he was reading the document would not be entirely accurate, more precisely, Arthur was pondering over it.

Even if other shareholders were excluded, just the first name on the list had been enough for him to reflect on for several days.

To say it was the first name was also not entirely accurate, since in this document sent by the French Embassy, these front-line individuals could all be summed up with one name—Lloyd’s Insurance.

As the most successful insurance company in the world today, perhaps also the most successful over the three centuries from the 19th to the 21st, the reputation of Lloyd’s Insurance had gradually become a golden signboard for Britain and even the global shipping industry since the 17th century.

But most people would never have guessed that the founder of this insurance giant, Edward Lloyd, was originally a small coffee house operator in the 17th century.

In the beginning, Lloyd’s Coffee House was located near Tower Street by the Thames.

Because Tower Street was close to the London Dock, alongside important maritime departments like the Customs, Navy Department, and Port Authority, and perhaps because their coffee was filled with the aroma of the ocean, Mr. Lloyd was also a sociable man.

Thus, over time, this place became a venue where captains, sailors, small loan company owners, and insurance businessmen involved in the shipping industry gathered to boast, discuss tricks for getting rich.

Some insurance businessmen, due to the high customer traffic here, simply set up their offices right on the tables of Lloyd’s Coffee House, where they would sign insurance policies with clients over afternoon tea, conducting their business.

Several years later, Mr. Lloyd, having made some money from running the coffee house, moved his establishment to a more upscale and prestigious location where the customers had higher spending power, at the intersection of Lombardy Street and Cornhill—home to London’s Royal Exchange.

As a successful café proprietor after the relocation, Mr. Lloyd’s immediate priority was how to attract new customers while retaining the old ones.

He keenly noticed the insurance brokers’ craving for the latest news. Given the poor communication conditions at the time, the businessmen sitting in the shop drinking coffee mostly just waited silently for news. They were either awaiting the arrival of merchant ships or exchanging information and discussing international news, and those in desperate situations would inquire from Lloyd every few minutes whether certain captains’ merchant ships had arrived.

To better serve his customers and also to expand his clientele, Lloyd started having his waitstaff pay attention to the businessmen coming and going, noting down the most timely maritime shipping information they could gather, including updates from major sea and river ports, domestic and international situations, and new business trends.

By nightfall, Lloyd would compile all these latest news items and write them on a notice board inside the shop for his customers to read.

Not only that, Mr. Lloyd thoughtfully set up a podium in the most prominent position of the coffee shop, having his waitstaff loudly read out shipping information to the businessmen every day. After all, not all those in the insurance business could read, right? In an era rife with illiteracy, every industry had its share of nouveau riche who had struck it lucky.

However, not every insurance businessman would visit Lloyd’s Coffee House daily; domestic issues could arise in anyone’s family.

To address this problem, Mr. Lloyd specifically started publishing a newspaper called "Lloyd’s Shipping News" for those businessmen who missed out on the news.

In this manner, the modest Lloyd’s Coffee House gradually became the main trading market of London’s insurance industry. By 1719, the amount of maritime insurance transactions completed in the coffee house had reached an astonishing 9 million British Pounds.

"Lloyd’s Shipping News" also evolved into "Lloyd’s Register of Ships," a newspaper whose authority in the insurance industry was second only to the "London Gazette" used by the British Government to publish significant political news. Even "The Times" and "The Guardian" could not match its influence in this aspect.

The regular customers of Lloyd’s Coffee House also spontaneously organized an institution named Lloyd’s Register Society, whose main business was to assess and register the safety ratings of ships into "Lloyd’s Register of Ships" for reference by major shipowners and insurance businessmen.

If that were all there was to it, the name Lloyd would clearly not be worth highlighting in such detail.

The reason Lloyd’s Insurance merits special mention is that by 1771, the insurance businessmen realized that the small Lloyd’s Coffee House was increasingly unable to support the large group of insurance businessmen conducting business.

Therefore, a longtime customer, a Dutch insurance businessman named Van Mier, proposed to the group the establishment of a ’New Lloyd’s’ office as a trading platform for maritime insurance.

He issued shares of the new office for 100 pounds each, quickly raised nearly ten thousand pounds, and John Angerstein, a Russian insurance businessman from St. Petersburg, suggested that the company should rent office space at the Royal Exchange.