Lloyd’s will sign off plans that will allow the market to write about $US15 billion ($20.97 billion) of new business in 2021, CEO John Neal says.

Mr Neal made the comments during Aon's latest “fireside chat”.

“We’re in the heat of battle at the moment signing off business plans. I think the market will grow next year by something in the order of 12-13%,” Mr Neal said.

“To put a number on that … we’ll be signing off plans that will allow the market to write around $US15 billion in new business in 2021 and happy to do so, happy that we’re confident that the market is on track to perform in line with expectation.”

The market could grow in two ways, he said: pricing was “clearly going up” and “we can actually allow some growth in exposure”.

Mr Neal says the world changed forever during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis when low interest rates became entrenched. This year, the COVID pandemic had triggered “mind boggling” economic policy and he warned that “we’re about to go into the biggest recession we will have ever seen”.

The US had borrowed a further $US6 trillion ($8.4 trillion), he noted, and debt levels were the highest since the Second World War.

“I can’t write the number down it is so big,” he said. “The recession we’re going to go into is going to be horrible but unusually it is going to be completely uneven.”

Some businesses would do unusually well and a lot will struggle, he said.

Insurers got “off to a slow start” and were “on the back foot in the media” after the pandemic struck, he said, comparing this to banks during the GFC.

“COVID’s been a wake up call,” he said.

He also said the ability to connect in person was critical in certain circumstances and perversely, the value of having a “legitimate location to meet has just gone up”.