Lloyd's of London swings back to profit in 2019

LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - Lloyd's of London reported a 2.5 billion pounds pretax profit ($2.97 billion) for 2019 on Thursday thanks to tighter underwriting and robust investment returns, and said it stood ready to support customers and partners impacted by coronavirus.

The 330-year-old insurance market, which reports aggregate result figures of its syndicate members, said its solvency ratio - a key measure of balance sheet strength - was 205%, despite the high degree of turbulence in financial markets in recent weeks.

Lloyd's, which covers commercial risks from oil rigs to footballers' legs, suffered steep losses in 2017 and 2018 due to natural catastrophes such as hurricanes, typhoons and wildfires.

It had told members to cut their worst-performing lines of business as part of a plan tovreturn to profit in 2019.

Lloyd's recorded a loss of 1 billion pounds in 2018, after a 2 billion pound loss in 2017.

($1 = 0.8430 pounds) (Reporting by Sinead Cruise; editing by Simon Jessop)