One was founded in 1843 to help poor families in the North West bury their loved ones with dignity. The other is a rapacious private equity giant born in the ‘greed is good’ heyday of the 1980s.
Little could the founding members of Liverpool Victoria, one of the best-known and oldest mutuals, have contemplated that one day they would be forced to confront the financial might of an outfit like Boston-based Bain Capital.
The origins of LV, which provides pensions, life insurance and investment funds to 1.2million policyholder owners, could hardly be further from the future it faces under the ownership of swashbuckling vulture capitalists.
But it is now threatened with becoming the latest victim of the pandemic plundering of British firms by foreign private equity giants, using the chaos wreaked by coronavirus to pick up prized assets on the cheap.
One was founded in 1843 to help poor families in the North West bury their loved ones with dignity. Pictured: A street scene in a Liverpool slim in 1980s
Our story starts in Liverpool 178 years ago when William Fenton, a 36-year-old customs officer, set up the Independent Legal Burial Society with friends. For many decades, they were best known for their ‘penny policy’ life insurance, which saw agents travel door to door to collect premiums.
People could insure themselves or their children’s lives for as little as a penny a week, and, when they died, the society would pay toward a funeral. By 1863, the society’s work had extended as far as Plymouth, London, Scotland and across to Ireland.
In the early 20th century, Liverpool Victoria was approved to administer a system of compulsory health insurance for the working class – one of the precursors of the modern welfare state. By 1930 it was managing 13million policies from newly acquired offices in Bloomsbury, London.
Today, the company is known as LV=, the result of a trendy rebrand in 2007, and a series of heart-warming advertising campaigns containing lime green cars and the now-famous green LV heart.
It has 5,500 staff, more than three times the number it had 15 years ago, and is now the UK’s second biggest mutual insurer.
Mission: LV was set up to help the poor of Liverpool in the reign of Victoria
Young boys take some time off at the water fountain opposite the 'Morning Star' public house, at the corner of Richmond Row and Byram
