Specialist insurance market Lloyd's of London is close to announcing whether it is considering relocating part of its operations if the UK loses vital passporting rights as a result of the Brexit vote.
Chairman John Nelson told City A.M. he was "hopeful" the UK could strike a deal with the rest of the EU to preserve the financial services passport, which lets firms do business across the other 27 members from a UK headquarters. However, he added: "We have to plan on a contingency basis, so that's what we're doing.
"We've had some contingency plans in place for a while. We're refining them at the moment ... We have to have our plans ready to roll in the fairly near future."
Chief executive Inga Beale told the BBC the plans could include setting up an EU subsidiary or Lloyd's branches in continental Europe.
Nelson has previously said Lloyd's would be forced to move operations away from London if the UK and EU did not reach a decent agreement over financial services. He indicated today that Lloyd's would not wait for the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50 or for the shape of the negotiations to become clear before starting to get those ducks in a row.
Publication of the kind of back-up plans Lloyd's is considering will come "in the next few months", Nelson told City A.M.
"We're busy making the case for the maintenance of passporting rights," he said. "The full impact of the loss of passporting rights... could be quite substantial. People are beginning to see that.
"The second thing is there is great pressure from third party countries such as Japan, the US and China on the UK government to preserve passporting rights in terms of maintaining their investments here.
"And the other thing which people are beginning to discuss is the issue of the EU itself. If you look at the financial services institutions in the EU I think many are as keen as we are to preserve passporting." [...]
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