Sir Peter Miller
Energetic head of his family’s marine insurance broking business who did much to reform Lloyd’s
SIR PETER MILLER, who has died aged 87, was a reforming chairman of Lloyd’s insurance market during one of its most troubled eras. As fourth-generation head of his family’s marine insurance broking business, Miller was a Lloyd’s man to his fingertips. He first joined Lloyd’s committee in 1977 and deployed his training as a barrister to lead the team that piloted the 1982 Lloyd’s Act, which followed the recommendations of the Fisher Report to create a more democratic ruling council and address conflicts of interest in the ownership of member firms.
When Miller succeeded Sir Peter Green in the chair in January 1984, Lloyd’s was besieged by allegations of scandal. Inquiries were in hand into the underwriting businesses of Alexander Howden and PCW, in which millions were alleged to have been siphoned off by insiders, and Green himself (later censured for “disreputable conduct”) was under criticism for bringing insufficient vigour to the cleaning of the stable.
With that task in mind, the Governor of the Bank of England had sent in the accountant Ian Hay Davison as Lloyd’s chief executive – but Miller and Davison were immediately at loggerheads.
“Mr Davison is the chef de cabinet while I am the prime minister,” was Miller’s version of their respective positions. Davison acknowledged that Miller was “an extremely energetic man” who created “a mood of bustle which accelerated the reform programme”. But he saw himself as the Bank of England’s “agent of change” with a reporting line to the Lloyd’s council, rather than as the chairman’s subordinate, and resisted erosion of his authority.
In a phase when confidence in Lloyd’s was on the up again, however, it was Miller and his cohort who prevailed, and Davison who resigned in November 1985.
Among the achievements of Miller’s tenure were a favourable negotiation with the Inland Revenue over the treatment of underwriting liabilities and a settlement of Names’ losses in the PCW case, which he described as “one of the most shameful episodes in the long history of Lloyd’s”.
More positively, he presided over the opening of the market’s bold new building in Lime Street, designed by Richard Rogers.
Having taken charge when, as he put it, “Lloyd’s had let the City down [and] the honest men were shattered by what a small number of miscreants had done”, over his three years in the chair Miller left the market’s morale, as well as its rule-book, in notably better health. His personal reputation was unstained by the failings that had to be addressed during his tenure, but it was inevitable that he would leave unfinished business for his successors over the following decade.
Peter North Miller was born on September 28 1930. His greatgrandfather Thomas Robson Miller, a Newcastle shipowner descended from German immigrants, moved to London in the 1880s to become joint manager of the United Kingdom Mutual Steam Ship Protection Association, later the UK P&I Club.
This was a mutual association formed by British and international shipowners to provide “protection and indemnity” insurance for risks such as collision, injury to crew and damage to cargo.
In an era of huge growth in commercial shipping, Thomas Miller became sole manager of the UK P&I Club and it remained a family business until the late 1960s. Peter’s father Cyril was a barrister specialising in maritime law who served in SOE during the Second World War and then joined his older brother Dawson as a partner of Thos R Miller & Son Insurance, a Lloyd’s broker.
Peter was educated at Rugby, where he played in the first XV and was captain of running; he did National Service in the Intelligence Corps before going up to Lincoln College, Oxford, and winning a Blue for cross-country. In 1953, while studying for his bar exams, he joined Thos R Miller. He was called to the Bar in 1954.
Having entered the partnership in 1960, he was senior partner from 1971 to 1996, but relinquished the firm’s executive chairmanship during the years when he was fully engaged in Lloyd’s affairs. He was also a member of the Baltic Exchange, a vice president of the British Insurance Brokers Association, chairman of Lloyd’s Tercentenary Foundation and Lord Lieutenant for the City of London. He was knighted in 1988.
Miller was a “tenant” (feudal landholder) of Sark and for 40 years a member of Chief Pleas, the island’s parliament. He retained a keen interest in all sport “except cricket”.
He married first, in 1955, Katharine Milner; secondly, in 1979, “Leni” Boon Lian Gowans; and thirdly, in 1991, Jane Herbertson, who survives him with their son, and two sons and a daughter of the first marriage.
Sir Peter Miller, born September 28 1930, died January 30 2018