The world’s biggest financial services diversity festival began in controversy this week after climate protestors staged a demonstration to disrupt its launch.

Students and young people from Youth Demand disrupted the Opening Event of the Dive In Festival at Lloyd’s of London, attended by the market’s CEO Patrick Tiernan.

The protest took place inside Lloyd’s Lime Street headquarters where senior executives, were gathered to launch the annual global festival which seeks to highlight the need for diversity in the global insurance industry.

Protestors rushed the stage and unfurled banners reading “Complicit in Genocide”, demanding an end to Lloyd’s underwriting in the insuring of arms manufacturers oil and gas expansion and by members of their market.

The Dive In Festival, created by Inclusion@Lloyd’s, promotes “diversity and inclusion in insurance” aiming to tackle talent shortages in the sector.

But the young campaigners said these efforts are meaningless as long as the industry continues to underwrite projects which disproportionately harm underrepresented communities.

They added: “Taken together, the Lloyd’s market is the world’s largest centre for fossil fuel insurance, collecting an estimated £2 billion a year in premiums. Unlike all major European insurers, Lloyd’s has not refused to rule out underwriting new coal mines and oil & gas projects​, despite clear climate science that new fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with a liveable future.

More concerningly will be the comments that the protests highlighted a growing rejection of the insurance industry among young people. Campaigners said according to a recent poll, just 13% of students say they would ever consider a career in insurance attractive, a historic low.

A spokesperson for the actions said: “This is the ultimate hypocrisy. Insurance companies want to recruit diverse young talent while underwriting the very projects that will make their future unliveable. They want to be the face of inclusive hiring – but their version of inclusion includes floods, fires and famine for underrepresented groups. You don’t get to host career inclusion festivals while profiteering from exclusionary destruction. We’re here to say: inclusion without justice is not inclusion at all.”

It will send shivers thought he insurance sector which has long been involved in a protracted fight for talent with its financial services peers. It does however speak to a wider issue of how the financial services sector will attract the best young talent if its role in the finance of what is deemed to be climate impacting projects is turning young people away.

The support (re)insurance givens to the creation of new renewable energy facilities and technology is only increasing. However, it seems to be clouded by the ongoing coverage of fossil fuel facilities which will be needed to power the planet in the coming decades until net zero can achieve its necessary scale.

Jon Guy, Editor,

Emerging Risks