It is perhaps no accident that Edward Lloyd's second coffeehouse was situated on Lombard Street beginning in 1692. The original coffeehouse was located on Tower Street in London. It may have been those Lombardian merchants and their concepts of insuring the risks of ocean voyages that drew them into Lloyd's coffeehouse to meet with shippers, sea captains, and their agents or brokers and learn of fresh ventures to insure.

By Elizabethan times, merchants and vessel owners were scouring the city for those willing to "under write" marine coverage on their voyages. Godfrey Hodgson reports in Lloyd's of London (Viking Press, 1984) that the founding of the Royal Exchange and the great trading companies led to one insurance dispute involving a Richard Chandler, who tried to gain a monopoly on the registering of insurance policies utilizing brokers.

"In 1601, two years before the great Queen's death, an Act of Parliament sought to establish a court 'for the hearing and determining of causes arising from policies of assurance'." While the court was not much of a success, it at least demonstrated that the principles of insurance were well-known and understood by those that dealt in it.