Africa Specialty Risk Syndicate 2454 will focus on African risks, which currently make up only 2% of the Lloyd’s market.

Africa Specialty Risks (ASR), the pan-African focused re/insurance group, has announced the launch of the first ever Africa-focused Lloyd’s syndicate.

Lloyd's building

The syndicate will look to build Lloyd’s consortia following Syndicate 2454 to deploy greater capacity, ASR said.

Only 2% of Lloyd’s business originates from Africa, a much-underserved insurance market, ASR noted.

The launch of ASR Syndicate 2454 makes use of ASR’s existing network and experience in Africa, bringing local African business to the London market.

ASR was launched in 2021 with the aim of closing the insurance gap in Africa and facilitating international investment into and across the continent, and has been involved in de-risking more than $20bn of projects in Africa and the Middle East.

“Across ASR, we are building a business whose prime mission is to increase insurance penetration across Africa, and Syndicate 2454 is another positive step in helping us achieve our objective,” said Mikir Shah, CEO of ASR.

“Working with Apollo and Lloyd’s, we hope to be able to bring innovative risk mitigation solutions to the African insurance market and encourage high quality international capital and investment to take advantage of the vast opportunities we see on the continent,” Shah added.