In his first public address to a U.S. audience, Lloyd's Chief Executive Officer Richard Ward guaranteed a transformation in the world's oldest insurance market by year's end–promising greater contract certainty, electronic processing of all new claims and direct access for outside brokers.

“If we don't achieve these goals by the close of 2007, I might be looking for another job,” he quipped in a speech here last week before the New York Chapter of the Risk and Insurance Management Society and the Association of Professional Insurance Women.

Mr. Ward–who said he spent a good deal of his first year in office learning the ropes by working with underwriters, brokers and “the unsung heroes” in claims–guaranteed that Lloyd's under his stewardship will rid itself of the “two jumbo jets” full of paperwork “clogging up the process” to improve turnaround time, product quality and the expense of doing business.