Reputation is everything: Asta’s Harfitt
As the biggest managing agency in the Lloyd’s market, with more than £4.5bn of underwriting capacity under management, Asta’s focus is on steady, sustainable growth, its chief executive says
Lloyd’s third-party managing agency Asta has significantly increased the scale and scope of its business in recent years but it is also braced for a more challenging market environment, its chief executive, Lorraine Harfitt, says
Asta, the largest third-party managing agency in the Lloyd’s market, is getting bigger: this year, it increased the number of syndicates under management by four and it is working on another two syndicate launches which it anticipates will happen in January 2026.
With 16 full syndicates, seven syndicates-in-a-box (SIABs) and one special-purpose arrangement, Asta has more than £4.5bn ($6.05bn) of underwriting capacity under management. This makes it the biggest managing agency in the market, according to a report by the Lloyd’s Market Association and Insurance Capital Markets Research.
Over the past 18 years, Asta has launched more than 45 syndicates and supported the build-out of 11 managing agencies. “Nobody else in the market has done that,” Lorraine Harfitt, Asta’s chief executive, tells Insurance Day. “Nobody else has the experience of navigating that business life cycle so many times.”
Harfitt sees last year as a watershed one for Asta. “I think the trigger there was the change in the type of client coming to us. Last year, with Fidelis syndicate 3123, we acquired a very large client. Previously, new syndicates tended to be much smaller and much leaner. Fidelis coming on board, along with the novation of Ki (syndicate 1618) from Brit, changed things for us,” she says.
Asta also launched three SIABs last year. “This was completely different in scale and shape from the Fidelis launch,” she says. “Supporting SIABs has been great for us because it shows within the Lloyd’s market we can manage everything from one end of the size scale to the other. It also enables us to develop our own pipeline of full syndicates.”
To date, Asta has had two SIABs grow to scale and transition into full syndicates. Of the nine SIABs operating in the market at present, seven are managed by Asta.
Capacity growth
The growth of the business and change in the client profile are most clearly reflected in Asta’s capacity figures. In 2021, the managing agency had around 12 syndicates and slightly more than £1bn in underwriting capacity under management. In the space of less than four years, those figures have increased to 16 syndicates and £4.5bn under management.
“We now have three very large clients in Fidelis, Ki and Convex and that really shifts the needle in terms of the amount of capacity we are managing. Clients of that size also have different expectations in terms of what they want from us,” Harfitt says.
Asta’s scale, Harfitt believes, is a huge benefit for clients. “Not just in terms of economies and efficiencies, but also in the community spirit we create with cross-client forums and events that have proved especially useful as different businesses navigate their way through similar issues,” she says.
Asta is under constant scrutiny from Lloyd’s and the UK regulators, Lorraine Harfitt says
Alongside its trajectory of strong growth, Asta is also seeing more competition from other turnkey and third-party managing agency service providers. This has been the case for the past four to five years, according to Harfitt. For example, third-party management services for new syndicates are now increasingly being put out to tender, with two or three managing agencies invited to submit proposals. Previously, access to that business was much more reliant on market networks and relationships.
These pressures – which Harfitt describes as healthy for the business – have, in part, led to a review of Asta’s Lloyd’s platform, its managing general agent (MGA) platform and its broader service offerings. A key issue is whether Asta’s core service offering is still the right offering. “We have put a lot of work into addressing that question,” she says.
In this regard, one of the most gratifying developments for Harfitt in 2025 was the novation or transfer earlier this year of the Ki and GIC Re syndicates from other managing agencies to Asta. “Both those syndicates came from more traditional managing agencies with their own syndicates. For us, this is what makes Asta unique, even compared with our third-party competitors in the market: the fact we are truly independent.”
Asta does not have its own syndicate to manage. It does not underwrite on its own account, whereas other third-party managing agencies in the market do. “We don’t have any conflict of interest. There is no temptation to prioritise our own interests over those of a third party,” Harfitt says. “That independence, as far as we are concerned, is very important.”
MGA expansion
To strengthen the relevance of its offering, Asta has also extended the role of its MGA platform, Asta Underwriting Management (AUM), beyond just incubating new MGAs to facilitate market access and distribution for Asta’s syndicate clients that also operate outside Lloyd’s, particularly in Europe. AUM also has its own quote-and-bind system which is increasingly used by Asta’s non-MGA clients.
Another factor driving the review is Asta has been working with its owner, Davies, to develop synergies between the two businesses and more generally to explore how Asta can most effectively use the significant resources within the firm.
“We don’t have any conflict of interest. There is no temptation to prioritise our own interests over those of a third party. That independence, as far as we are concerned, is very important”
Lorraine Harfitt
Asta
Davies, which completed its acquisition of Asta in July 2022, is the second-largest captive manager in the world and one of the biggest providers of specialist technology solutions and professional services to the London, Bermuda and US insurance and reinsurance markets. These include audit, subrogation, delegated authority management, regulatory compliance and actuarial consulting services.
The group also has an MGA incubation and support platform which operates in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia and which to date has launched more than 70 MGAs.
“We don’t actively compete with the Davies MGA platform because internally that business is coming to the same place,” Harfitt says. A lot of work has been done over the past 18 months to align the Asta and Davies MGA platforms, which are now under the same leadership. The idea is to identify exactly what services Asta provides and what services Davies provides and how best to bring those together.
AUM supports two MGAs at present, but Harfitt is keen to increase that number, particularly at this point of the underwriting cycle when there are significant opportunities for MGAs.
Diversification
“Our MGA platform is hugely important to us. With Asta’s client base currently so focused in the Lloyd’s market, it is a useful diversification for us. Should Lloyd’s change its policies on new entrants into the market, the MGA platform provides another avenue for us to grow,” she says.
A great deal depends on Lloyd’s appetite for increasing the number of syndicates and managing agents in the market, particularly given the more challenging market conditions at this point of the underwriting cycle.
For example, Harfitt points out a number of SIABs entered the market during relatively short period between 2023 and 2024, but since then there has been a slow down in the number of people coming forward to launch SIABs.
“Given the scale of the market now, there are questions being raised as to what Lloyd’s strategy is for SIABs,” she says. “They are very small scale and so are they what Lloyd’s is really looking for, if at the same time it is also trying to attract all these big entities into the market? I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out.”
The aim for Asta is steady, sustainable growth. “We are only too aware as we get bigger, we pose more of a material risk to the market. For us, reputation is everything. As a business, we are under constant scrutiny from Lloyd’s and the regulators in the form of the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, but also from our clients,” she says.
There is no point, Harfitt says, in bringing in lots of new clients if existing clients are unhappy because they feel they are not getting the service they need. “We navigate a fine line between keeping our regulators and our fee paying clients happy,” she says.
