LONDON (Reuters) - Most business on the Lloyd’s of London insurance market will be negotiated electronically by the end of next year, its chief executive Inga Beale said on Monday.

The largest commercial insurance market in the world still runs a trading room where thousands of brokers gather daily to negotiate contracts.

“It is predominantly done on paper and yet we know that’s not sustainable in today’s world,” Beale told the annual CityWeek conference.

“We have a huge modernization effort, but I am not doing a big bang and shutting down the underwriting room like the stock exchange did to go digital over 30 years ago.”

She has already mandated that 30 percent of trading must be done digitally by the end of this year, and the aim is to hit 80 percent by the end of next year, she said.

Many of the wholesale insurers who operate on the Lloyd’s market “are with us on this,” Beale added.