Historical context of Equitable Life Archive

This was a time of great commercial and industrial expansion yet Britain’s government was under pressure of debt to recover its position from colonial losses to America newly gaining her independence and then to finance uncertain coalition forces against French armies under Napoleon. (Richard Price is also known for his early ideas of a ‘Sinking Fund’ or ‘Annual Saving’ which influenced William Pitt the Younger’s endeavours to reach balance in the national budget).

The Society survived where some of the other insurance companies of the nineteenth century fell for want of appropriate reserve funding. The regulation of life insurance which the Life Assurance Companies Act 1870 first brought in essentially caught up with the Society’s lead in undertaking regular actuarial valuations. After the Society was incorporated by the Companies Act of 1893, it became the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Under the stewardship of George Lidstone and Sir William Elderton, the Society’s position into the first half of the twentieth century and long after the end of the Second World War appeared to become unshakeable.

The period covered in the Archive purchased by the profession ends in 1950. Although the Society's development until the 1990s was a continuation of substantial and firmly underpinned progress “as the longest surviving assurance company”, it has, by its own account, "in recent years undergone an exceptionally difficult period" (Equitable Life Assurance Society’s website).

For more information, please contact: libraries@actuaries.org.uk