Lloyd's Market Association (LMA)
The trade association of Lloyd's managing agents, which drafts the model clauses used across the London market, including the cyber war and communicable disease exclusions.
The Lloyd's Market Association, created in 2001, represents the managing agents and members' agents operating at Lloyd's. It underwrites nothing and regulates nothing; its influence lies in a quieter function, drafting model clauses. The texts it publishes, identified by a number, serve as the reference across the London market and well beyond, because an underwriter who reads LMA followed by a number knows exactly what it is signing without rereading every word. It also coordinates technical committees by line, including the war risks committee that keeps the list of maritime risk areas. For the underwriter, the model clause is a double-edged market tool. It reduces contractual uncertainty and drafting cost, and lets followers align quickly with the lead. But it also standardizes exposure: when a model clause leaves a gap, the whole market using it has the same gap at the same moment, which turns a drafting imprecision into an accumulation risk. That is why every major crisis, pandemic, war, cyber, results in a wave of new LMA clauses.
In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the association published the LMA 5393 communicable disease exclusion, adopted within months in a large share of the market's property policies; in November 2021 it published the four cyber war exclusions LMA 5564 to 5567, revised in January 2023.
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