For the underwriters and brokers on the trading floors surrounding the vast atrium at the centre of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market, business is good.

The centuries-old institution — a marketplace of more than 50 insurers and hundreds of brokers selling policies covering everything from cyber attacks to hurricanes — has shaken off Covid disruption and a run of costly years for natural catastrophes to deliver its best underwriting performance since 2007. 

Efforts by management to help some of the market’s underperforming insurers improve have contributed, alongside rising insurance prices. September’s announcement of former senior Treasury official Sir Charles Roxburgh as its next chair was well received. 

Roxburgh said on his appointment that the market offered “valuable protection to its customers and healthy financial returns to members and investors”.

But the positive news belies unease among senior market figures about changes at the top of Lloyd’s in the midst of long-running problems with a crucial IT project, according to multiple people who talked to the Financial Times.

Some are keen for Roxburgh to start as soon as possible to tackle the challenges, even ahead of his formal start date in May.

A key frustration has been “Blueprint II”, a project to replace the market’s fragmented, decades-old back office systems. The IT upgrade was first set out in 2019 and refined the following year, but there have been repeated delays. An announcement in June scrapped a planned October launch.

“It has been promised and promised and promised, and not delivered, and now it is going to be 2025,” said one senior executive in the market. “People are very frustrated.”

Another complained of a lack of clarity about how the project was progressing. “It had not [been built] to the degree that everyone thought it had. This was something that in January they were telling us would launch in July.” A third said it was a “credibility issue” for Lloyd’s senior leadership.

Lloyd’s declined to comment for this article.

Lloyd’s has long struggled with the challenge of creating a common IT platform for the market. Currently, participants use a patchwork of sometimes aged systems, with different data standards and lots of manual tasks. Much of the trading is still face-to-face.

The initial goal is a common system with claims and policy data recorded in a standardised way for everyone to see. The bigger prize would be faster and more streamlined processes, connecting seamlessly to the platforms where policies are agreed and allowing automated settlement of the tens of billions of pounds of claims paid by the market every year.

But a lot of the work has been held up, executives say, by the difficulties of co-ordinating a single system for all of the market and by the complexity of some of the insurance and reinsurance policies.

Some senior market participants say the delays are harder to understand given the project had already been split into two stages: upgrading back office systems and standardising data first, and the more ambitious changes later.

The corporation that runs Lloyds “accepts responsibility for the delay, but is confident of delivery in 2025” said a person familiar with its position. The project is the responsibility of Velonetic, a joint venture between Lloyd’s and IT consultancy DXC. The person added that “market testing identified much greater complexity in the interactions between market and settlement systems causing delays”.

Lloyd’s chief operating officer Bob James was appointed boss of Velonetic this year, and the unit promised to provide more transparency and a “clear timeline”. DXC did not respond to requests for comment.

Others draw parallels with a previous attempt to digitise processes. In 2016, the Lloyd’s market started using Placing Platform Limited, a digital system for “placing, signing and closing” insurance contracts with other market participants.

Robert Iremonger, a risk consultant in the Lloyd’s market, said it was often not used as originally envisaged.

“Many of the underwriters still use paper slips in some instances and then the broker puts it on to PPL,” he said. “It is duplicating the workload.” PPL said roughly 70 per cent of contracts uploaded to the system had already been agreed in the market.

John Mason, the new chief executive of PPL, which is majority owned by Lloyd’s, said it was exploring how to encourage uptake, such as by providing data to traders to inform their underwriting.

In addition to frustration about the slow progress on Blueprint II, some senior people in the market also worry about strains at the top of the leadership of Lloyd’s Corporation, which oversees the wider Lloyd’s market.

It is in a handover period for its new chair, its interim COO George Marcotte started the job only this month and its chief of markets Patrick Tiernan is on temporary medical leave.

Chief executive John Neal has temporarily taken over Tiernan’s regulatory responsibility for overseeing the market performance of Lloyd’s insurers, adding to his existing regulatory and management responsibilities.

One insurance executive said the corporation’s reliance on Neal for a few key roles was an “operational risk”.

A person familiar with the corporation’s view highlighted the “strong bench of talent” beneath top executives that is helping to manage the situation.

Roxburgh’s job is likely to include the appointment of an eventual replacement for Neal, who was appointed in 2018 with no fixed term. Tiernan is a leading internal candidate, according to people familiar with the matter.

Roxburgh returns to the UK in February from the US, and is expected to start to shadow outgoing chair, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, shortly afterwards, according to people familiar with the plans.

Roxburgh is an “outstanding intellect with deep strategic understanding” of Lloyd’s, said industry veteran Michael Wade.

Lloyd’s, he added, faces big challenges including changes in technology. But its unique set-up, as a marketplace of highly skilled underwriters and brokers surrounded by an ecosystem of specialist consultants and lawyers, should see it through. “It’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses.”

SAINSBURY’S have issued an urgent recall urging shoppers to “not eat” two products over allergy risks.

The Yorkshire Provender Jacket and Toast Topper Mexican Inspired Lentil Chilli and the Yorkshire Provender Jacket and Toast Topper Haricot Beans in a Spicy Tomato Sauce have been recalled due to health concerns.

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Power-hungry artificial intelligence is consuming increasingly vast amounts of energy from the creaking US grid and threatening national efforts to tackle climate change, according to the latest expert forecasts.

Unprecedented energy demand, fuelled in part by expanding data centres for AI, combined with the slower-than-expected pace of renewable development and longer operating timelines for polluting coal plants, have prompted analysts to recast their models for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The theme dominated discussions at Climate Week NYC, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week, where technology companies were more in focus than the fossil fuel companies behind pollution historically.

The latest report from BloombergNEF this week warned of the slower US progress on decarbonisation, predicting emissions would be reduced by as little as 34 per cent by 2030 from their 2005 levels.

The latest assessment puts the US trajectory even further from its national target to cut its emissions by 50-52 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, under its pledge to the Paris agreement.

“That’s not good by a long shot,” said Tara Narayanan, lead power analyst at BloombergNEF, calling the rise of AI power demand a “big disruption” to supply.

“It’s very much like that moment when you’re deep in the movie, and three different plot lines have been developed. You don’t know if it’s going to get resolved,” Narayanan said. 

The lack of grid infrastructure is proving a big constraint to progress on the green energy transition not just in the US but around the world.

China is set for an unparalleled $800bn in spending the next six years to overcome strains on the energy system as it makes a rapid shift from coal power to renewable sources.

In the US, power demand remained virtually flat for two decades. Now forecasters such as consultancy group ICF expect it to rise 9 per cent by 2028 and nearly 20 per cent by 2033, citing data centre growth, the onshoring of manufacturing and electrification.

The Electric Power Research Institute predicted this year that data centres could double their share of US electricity consumption by the end of the decade. 

But Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, said she believed the country could still meet its net zero targets and handle the explosion in power demand, thanks to the near-$370bn green subsidies rolled out in the Inflation Reduction Act by Joe Biden’s administration.

“We have to be aggressive, but the momentum has begun, and it is not slowing down,” Granholm told the Financial Times.

Renewable project developers say the generation of green energy to meet the historic levels of demand is hampered by the fact that it can take up to half a decade to bring new supply online due to permitting and grid rollout delays.

“The need of the hour is to balance this,” said Sandhya Ganapathy, chief executive of EDP Renewables North America. “Unfortunately we may not have the [renewable] projects at the pace that is required.”

The proliferation of AI data centres has led to a race among Big Tech companies to find sources of low-emission round-the-clock power.

Last week, Constellation Energy and Microsoft signed a 20-year deal to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the country’s most serious nuclear accident. 

Expectations for higher electricity demand have also led to US operators delaying coal-fired plant retirements. S&P Global Commodity Insights has revised its expectations for coal plant shutdowns by the end of the decade by 40 per cent, even as renewable energy ramps up.

“The way things are going right now, it is very hard to imagine the US electricity system being carbon-free by 2035,” said Akshat Kasliwal, a power expert at PA Consulting. “We’re farther off from that target relative to where we were, call it three, four years ago.”

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, a public utility, said the surge in demand meant that gas power stations would also be required to remain in the energy mix for longer to ensure reliability of supply. Gas is mainly made of the potent warming methane molecule, which retains more heat than carbon dioxide but is shorter-lived in the atmosphere.

“We are not a gas company . . . We do not have a dog in the hunt of trying to keep gas around,” Pizarro said. “We, the industry, need to make sure that we have a system that’s reliable, resilient, given more weather extremes, as affordable as possible.”

The US has no shortage of renewables capacity, however. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that nearly 1.5 terawatts of generation capacity is waiting to be connected to the grid, enough to more than double the size of the country’s electricity system.

But projects built last year faced five years before they could get grid connection, and a shortage of transmission lines makes it difficult to transport green energy from distant generation sites to centres of demand.

Research firm Rhodium Group found that if data centre demand nearly tripled by 2035, and developers struggle to install new wind and solar, power sector emissions could be more than 56 per cent higher than forecast in its moderate emissions outlook.

However, the steep projections could also become much more muted as data centres become more efficient, tech group executives argue, and the wider adoption of AI reduces energy consumption by improving daily operations.

“Although it consumes energy to train the models, the models that are created will do the work much more energy efficiently,” said Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, the fastest-growing AI chipmaker, at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Friday. “The energy efficiency and the productivity gains that we’ll get from [AI] . . . is going to be incredible.”

Climate Capital

Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.

Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here

LLANDDWYN Beach in Wales has won praise online, with some describing it as where the forest meets the sea.

Located in Anglesey, Traeth Llanddwyn (Llanddwyn Beach) is backed by Newborough National Nature Reserve and Forest, meaning the tall forest trees line the banks of the beach.

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TikTok user aimee__laurenwilliams recently posted a video about the beach, writing: “One of the only UK places where the forest meets the sea”.

Newborough National Nature Reserve and Forest covers a large swathe of land in Anglesey, including Malltraeth Sands, the Cob Pool, Cefni Saltmarsh, Abermenai Point, Llanddwyn Island, Llanddwyn Bay and Penrhos Bay.

The pine trees that line Traeth Llanddwyn were planted between 1947 and 1965 to help stabilise the shifting sand dunes.

Just ten years after the trees were planted, Newborough National Nature Reserve and Forest was declared the first coastal nature reserve in 1955.

Because the area covers a large expanse of land, there’s plenty to keep visitors entertained.

Traeth Llanddwyn is a Blue Flag that’s home to more than 3.5 miles of golden sand and crystal-clear waters.

While there aren’t lifeguards, there are free toilets, as well as BBQ areas, picnic benches and food trucks in the summer.

From the beach, holidaymakers will be able to reach Ynys Llanddwyn (Llanddwyn island) at low tide.

The island, which has sweeping views over Snowdonia, is named after Saint Dwynwen, the Welsh patron saint of lovers, making it a popular spot for romantic getaways.

Visitors to Ynys Llanddwyn will find the ruins of St Dwynwen’s Church, a lighthouse (Tŵr Mawr), and Pilot’s Cottages, which have been converted into a small museum and visitor centre.

Meanwhile, Newborough National Nature Reserve and Forest is also home to some of the country’s rarest mammals like the red squirrel.

There are several walking routes and trails in the nature reserve, including the Saint, Sand and Sea Trail.

The four-and-a-half-mile walk takes visitors on a three-hour journey through the Welsh nature reserve.

For families with younger children, there’s also the Nature/Animal Puzzle Trail.

The one-hour route starts in the beach car park and continues through the forest path.

Kids will be given a leaflet and tasked with animal spotting on the walk.

OTHER WELSH BEACHES

There are plenty of other “hidden” beaches dotted throughout Wales, including Skrinkle Haven Beach.

Beach-goers can only reach Skrinkle Haven Beach through a narrow tunnel when the tide is low.

Earlier this year, travel writer Catherine Lofthouse visited the beach, she wrote: “You’ll need to be fairly sprightly to travel through the tunnel safely, but we managed it with our four-year-old, so it’s possible for little legs.

“There are warning signs about getting cut off and the uneven levels you’ll encounter, so use common sense and research tide times to keep safe.

“Beyond the tunnel, Haven is certainly a good name for it with its sheltered sides and inviting golden sands welcoming us in.

“It really feels like a place that time forgot, but we don’t have the luxury of setting time aside and all too soon, we need to climb back up the tunnel before we’re stranded by the tide.”

Meanwhile, this UK seaside town is almost like visiting a Greek island.

And you can watch dolphins from a music festival at this UK destination.

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SHOPPERS are racing to their nearest Home Bargains to buy £4 Polar Express slippers in time for Christmas.

A savvy bargain hunter shared the discovery on Facebook to alert others of the deal.

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It was uploaded to the Christmas Finds UK group.

The post read: “The Polar Express Slippers From £4 At Home Bargains.”

Group members were quick to weigh in with their opinions on the bargain find.

One wrote: “Get yourself to home bargains.”

Another said: “Got these and the pjs.”

Others tagged their pals and said that they “need these slippers”.

Do bear in mind that when prices are reduced it’s usually in order for stores to clear excess stock, so availability will vary from store to store.

It’s always best to phone ahead to your local shop to check what they have available to avoid disappointment.

You can find your nearest Home Bargains store using the locator tool on the website.

It always pays to compare prices so you know you’re getting the best deal.

Prices can also vary day to day and by what deals are on at the time, plus remember you might pay for delivery if you’re ordering online.

You can compare prices on platforms like Google Shopping.

How to save money at Home Bargains

Knowing when to pick up products is one way to save money at Home Bargains.

Visiting your local branch at the right time of day, week and year can help you pick up bargains from as little as 69p.

We spoke to Tom Church, a shopping expert who reveals the best times to visit the store to bag a bargain.

Also join any shopper bargain Facebook groups such as Extreme Couponing and Bargains, as people love to share the news when they have bagged a cheap deal.

Be sure to look out for seasonal stock too, like most retailers, Home Bargains slashes its prices after big public holidays such as Christmas and Easter.

Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.

Plus, you can join our Sun Money Chats and Tips Facebook group to share your tips and stories

The crowds filling the town square in rebel-held north-west Syria were ecstatic, honking car horns, letting off fireworks and shooting guns in the air. They were celebrating an assassination: that of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah and a sworn enemy of the Syrian opposition.

“We are celebrating the death of the despicable one,” a man yelled to a local journalist over the hubbub in jihadi-controlled Idlib, the last bastion of Syrian opposition. “He did a lot to us . . . Everyone from old to young is happy”. Another cried with joy.

Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Shia militant group, was killed in an Israeli air strike on Friday in Beirut, nearly a year after his group started launching rockets into Israel to support Hamas following its October 7 attack.

But the victorious atmosphere in Idlib was a reminder of how Hizbollah had also intervened in other conflicts across the Middle East, most notoriously fighting alongside Syrian dictator President Bashar al-Assad for more than a decade.

The decision to expand from its traditional territory of south Lebanon and enter Syria’s civil war was transformative for Hizbollah. It turned the militant group from a movement focused on resisting Israel from Lebanon into an attacking overseas force and a regional arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ overseas Quds Force.

The war in Syria also damaged Hizbollah, analysts said. It pitted it against fellow Muslims, eroding support among Sunnis and others around the Middle East who came to see it as a sectarian force propping up a hated dictator. Getting mired in a still unresolved war in Syria also overstretched the group, sowing the seeds for its current calamitous losses at the hands of an emboldened and untrammelled Israel, its original foe.

“Hizbollah’s role started to change”, said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute. “They were no longer a Lebanese resistance group. They became Quds force’s regional arm.”

For Assad, Hizbollah’s support was crucial. With backing from Iran and Russia, it helped him keep control of fractured Syria and crush all but small pockets of resistance such as Idlib, now packed with millions displaced from former opposition areas that Hizbollah fought to return to Assad’s control.

When Assad brutally put down mass protests and civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Nasrallah was faced with a difficult choice: potentially lose the friendly, Iran-aligned Assad regime to a likely hostile Sunni opposition government, or enter the battle and protect Hizbollah’s supply lines of weapons from Iran. He eventually decided to deploy about 10,000 men in the neighbouring country, according to multiple analysts, a significant amount of the group’s fighting force.

Supporters of Hizbollah argue that it helped push back the jihadist militant groups that had emerged from the wreckage of Syria’s opposition forces. The most powerful was Isis, which ultimately over-ran entire cities in eastern Syria and Iraq before being defeated by a US-co-ordinated coalition.

But critics blame the Shia militants for turning Syria’s civil war into a sectarian battle between Muslims. Most of Syria’s opposition is Sunni, the country’s majority sect, while Assad is Alawite, an offshoot of Shiism. Opposition media reported Hizbollah militiamen and regime soldiers had attacked villages in Idlib just last week.

“[Hizbollah] did all these ugly things,” said Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat under the Assad regime who defected to the opposition. “They made it a sectarian war, 100 per cent.”

Backing the Syrian dictator, who had been expelled by the Arab League and at the time was reviled around the Arab world, was an enormous gamble for Nasrallah. It expended much of the goodwill he had earned from withstanding a month-long Israeli offensive in 2006, when the group was widely praised for defying Israel and seen as victorious.

Randa Slim, a programme director at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Hizbollah officials she has spoken to knew that joining Assad would hurt their image, but believed that they would be able to restore their credibility in the next war with Israel: “Part of them, I think, believes this [current Gaza] war has helped them regain that goodwill . . . throughout the Arab publics.”

Analysts also said that Hizbollah’s victories in Syria appeared to artificially boost Nasrallah’s belief in his group’s military prowess, an attitude that Mohanad Hage Ali at the Carnegie Center in Beirut said was evident from his speeches.

While Hizbollah gained valuable battleground experience in Syria, fighting disparate rebel groups with no air power did only so much to prepare them for the might of Israel’s armed forces.

“This faux sense of military strength . . . was probably based on his Syrian experience again but it overlooked the fatigue impact,” Hage Ali said. “Fighting a war in south Lebanon for 30 to 40 days is one thing. Fighting a war for six to seven years in Syria is something else.”

Some analysts also argue that Hizbollah’s regional role for Iran, which included training and logistics support to Iran’s other proxy forces in Yemen and Iraq, may have helped distract Nasrallah’s commanders from their traditional focus on the Israeli front.

It “neglected the Israeli border while Israel was focusing on them,” said Ghaddar. “Israel was looking at Hizbollah as a priority, but Hizbollah was distracted by Syria.”

Hizbollah is now at its weakest point. Assad has so far been conspicuously silent about Nasrallah’s death, and the group’s members are under an unprecedented assault.

Southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, where Hizbollah had made its headquarters but which is densely packed with civilians, has been relentlessly targeted by Israeli air strikes. Dozens of civilians have been killed as well as Hizbollah commanders. Streams of Lebanese refugees, many of whom are Shia with Hizbollah members in their family, are heading for the Syrian border.

But Hizbollah’s investment in Syria may yet provide a lifeline. Years of fighting in the country allowed it to create a new stronghold outside Lebanon to which its fighters’ families can retreat, in the Damascus neighbourhood surrounding the important shrine to Sayyeda Zainab, the daughter of Ali, the first Shia Imam.

The area has “become more like Dahiyeh . . . They did build roots,” Ghaddar said, establishing religious centres and schools. “But they haven’t gone as deep as in Lebanon.”