CompanyGraph
Aon plc
AON · NYSE Arca · Ireland
Arranges giant insurance deals across Lloyd's of London and then uses the same math tools to help pension funds manage risk.
Aon places reinsurance programs too large for any single insurer to absorb by spreading each placement across dozens of Lloyd's of London underwriting syndicates, and doing that requires authorized Lloyd's broker status that Lloyd's itself grants only to brokers with decades of floor-trading history and established credit lines with individual syndicates. The actuarial platform built to model those catastrophe and liability exposures is then turned on pension fund portfolios for the same institutional clients, so the reinsurance infrastructure doubles as the technical foundation of the pension consulting business. Both halves sit on the same Lloyd's authorization, which means the whole structure depends on that status remaining intact — if post-Brexit regulatory fragmentation caused Lloyd's to reset its broker access rules, the capacity agreements underpinning the reinsurance placements would unwind at the same time the pension contracts lost their analytical backbone.
How does this company make money?
The firm earns a commission on each reinsurance premium it places, typically between 5 and 15 percent depending on the type of coverage. It charges consulting fees for actuarial and human capital advisory work, billed either per project or on a retainer. It collects transaction fees for structured risk solutions and captive insurance arrangements. On some specialty placements through Lloyd's syndicates, it also participates in profit-sharing arrangements when those deals perform well.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Reinsurance programs run for multiple years with capacity commitments already locked in, so a client cannot simply hand the placement to a different broker mid-cycle. Each country where coverage is placed requires a licensed broker in that jurisdiction, which creates legal delays when switching. The Lloyd's syndicate relationships that give access to specialty lines take years to rebuild from scratch. Pension consulting contracts are tied to embedded actuarial assumptions that are woven into the client's own financial planning, making a clean handoff to a new provider genuinely difficult.
What limits this company?
Each Lloyd's syndicate commits only a fixed amount of capacity per placement cycle, and they hand out those commitments based on years of demonstrated deal flow with a broker — not on how much capital a broker has. So growing the volume of placements means deepening existing syndicate relationships or earning access to new ones, and either path takes years, not months.
What does this company depend on?
The firm cannot operate without its Lloyd's of London authorized broker licences across multiple syndicates, its trading relationships in the Bermuda reinsurance market, its proprietary catastrophe modeling platforms, regulatory licences in 120-plus countries for cross-border placements, and established capacity agreements with major reinsurers including Munich Re and Swiss Re.
Who depends on this company?
Fortune 500 multinationals would lose access to coordinated insurance programs that work across many countries at once. Lloyd's of London syndicates would lose a major channel for getting complex specialty risks placed. The Bermuda reinsurance market would lose significant transaction flow for catastrophe and specialty deals. Pension fund clients would lose the integrated analysis they use to match their assets against long-term liabilities.
How does this company scale?
The actuarial modeling platform can be applied to more clients without being rebuilt each time — once developed, it spreads across the client base at low extra cost. But the senior broker relationships with Lloyd's syndicates and major reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re cannot be replicated through hiring or spending. Those take decades of credibility and deal history to build, which means the relationship layer stays a hard ceiling on how fast the business can grow.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
Climate change is pushing catastrophe losses beyond what historical models predicted, which causes reinsurers to pull back capacity and raise premiums — shrinking the market the firm operates in. Solvency II and IFRS 17 accounting rules require different risk capital calculations across European operations, adding regulatory complexity and cost. Post-Brexit fragmentation means the firm must now maintain separate regulatory arrangements for UK and EU market access, where it previously needed one.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
Post-Brexit regulation now requires separate access arrangements for the UK and EU markets. If Lloyd's restructured its broker authorization rules in response — resetting or severing existing capacity agreements with specific syndicates — the firm would lose the trading-floor standing that underpins both its reinsurance placement business and the pension consulting contracts that rely on the same platform. Both revenue streams share that single structural pin.