Lloyd’s provides insurance and reinsurance that supports and enables some of the world’s worst fossil fuel projects including coal mines, tar sands pipelines, and new oil & gas exploration. Their business plans are incompatible with keeping climate change under 1.5°C. In total, Lloyds insures 40% of the world’s energy. These practices are far from new. Lloyd’s has a long racist colonial past. Its wealth was built off insurance of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, on which it held a monopoly until abolition. Today, Lloyd’s continues to profit from underwriting projects that sacrifice Indigenous, Black, and brown communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis.

Without an insurer, many fossil fuel extraction projects could not go ahead. Over the last couple of years, a campaign has begun to pressure the insurance market to close its door to coal, oil, & gas. The pressure has been felt. At this point, more and more people are picking up on this crucial intervention point.

One project in particular stands out for its destructiveness and abuse of human rights. The TransMountain Expansion Pipeline in Western Canada cuts across the Lands of multiple Indigenous nations that are fiercely opposed to it. Arrests continue to be made to force it through. Led by Traditional Owners' people across the world have been pressuring insurance companies, and so far 16 insurers have cut ties with TransMountain.

“Our Indigenous and allied direct actions against insurers have worked. The Trans Mountain expansion degrades Indigenous ancestral homelands and sacred waters and is a perpetuation of genocidal practices by the Canadian petro-state. When Indigenous people including our youth rise, the world must listen. I am grateful that Chubb has dropped TransMountain, and we demand all other interested parties invested in this genocidal project follow suit.” Erica Masuskapoe, a frontline Indigenous participant in earlier lockdowns at Chubb, AIG, and Liberty Mutual offices in so-called Vancouver, BC.

The Lloyds marketplace is believed to still be insuring TransMountain, allowing it to pass through, even as many other insurance firms have abandoned the project.