EDWARD LAW

ARMS, CRESTS & MONOGRAMS

LIFE INSURANCE.

The earliest risk to have been covered by insurance in Britain was, not surprisingly for a great maritime power, marine loss. Fire insurance followed in the last quarter of the seventeenth century and life insurance emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century.

1762 saw the founding of the Society for Equitable Assurances on Lives and Survivorships, later to be known as the Equitable Society. This was followed by the Westminster Life office in 1792 and Pelican Life in 1797.

The leading general insurance companies, with an established market, also entered the life insurance business. The Imperial's life office dating from 1820, that of the Norwich Union being founded in 1808 and the Sun's in 1810.

There was again, as there had been with the fire insurance offices, an opportunity for new firms to enter the industry by targeting geographic areas of the provinces.

Illustrated above are a group of crests relating to life assurance in Scotland

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Page revised 13 April 2001