The Insurance Museum (IM) has secured a £249,700 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a three-year project focused on researching the UK's insurance heritage and expanding public education around the sector.
The funding will support the Insurance Heritage at Risk project, which will examine historic insurance collections held across public and corporate archives, while also developing education programmes aimed at schools, families and young people. The initiative is designed to introduce insurance as a concept, explore its historical development, explain its role in society and raise awareness of career opportunities within the industry.
According to IM director Howard Benge, the grant will enable the museum to significantly broaden its outreach activity, supporting learning programmes for younger audiences and engaging new communities across the UK. This focus on early engagement may also support the industry’s longer-term skills pipeline by increasing awareness of insurance as a career option, particularly as firms continue to face recruitment and retention pressures across technical and specialist roles.
Preserving industry knowledge
A core element of the project will be the preservation of industry knowledge through the recording of oral histories from professionals who worked in insurance from the late 1960s to the early 2000s.
The project will be delivered in collaboration with industry bodies and heritage organisations including the Chartered Insurance Institute, the Business Archives Council, City of London Libraries and the Bank of England. These partnerships are expected to help integrate insurance heritage more closely into professional education and public discourse.
Strengthening public understanding
For the insurance sector, the project has the potential to strengthen public understanding at a time when trust, transparency and engagement remain key challenges. For insurers and brokers specifically, the effort represents an opportunity to retain institutional memory.
Looking ahead, the Insurance Heritage at Risk programme will feed into the Insurance Museum’s ambition to establish a permanent public museum space in the City of London’s insurance district.
Combined with a programme of digital exhibitions, talks, tours and webinars across the UK, the initiative could provide insurers with a new platform to engage stakeholders, demonstrate social value and contribute to broader conversations about the role of insurance in supporting economic stability and resilience.
