The Lloyd’s Names – that hardy bunch of wealthy individuals who underwrote the market’s capacity for more than 300 years before being supplanted in the past couple of years by institutional investors – are still dealing a significant hand in the market.

The 2000 Names are providing more than $8 billion of the market’s $36.3 billion capacity this year. According to Business Insurance magazine, that’s well up on last year’s provision of $7.3 billion. Last year the Names’ contribution was 20% of the total, and this year it’s 22%.

Despite the success of Lloyd’s management in attracting more stable corporate capital into the market as part of its wide-ranging reforms, a spokesman for the Association of Lloyd’s Names said private investment, even on the potentially ruinous basis of unlimited liability, is “looking increasingly like a good deal”. About 75% of Names still operate on unlimited liability.

Lloyd’s is understood to be continuing talks with Names on options to move across to limited liability.