BRITANNIC ASSURANCE - MOOR GREEN MEMORIES

by Reg Monk
The 21st July 1969 was a Monday and half the world watched Neil Armstrong plant his feet
on the Moon at 3.56am on the night of 20/21 July. I was tucked up in bed though, because on
that Monday morning I was starting my new job at Britannic Assurance at Moor Green and
wanted to be alert.

Although I’d trained to be a teacher I decided that it wasn’t the job for me and I cast around
for a career in Birmingham. At that time the Birmingham Evening Mail listed jobs vacant
alphabetically and every Thursday Britannic would advertise for Bright Young Men and
Bright Young Women so I applied.
Assistant to the works manager of a sprinkler system manufacturer in West Bromwich was
another job that was offered to me but working alternate Saturdays seemed less attractive
than Monday to Friday work at Britannic and in those days the insurance job came with
fringe benefits such as a non-contributory pension, cheap car and house purchase loans at 4%
with the bonus that they weren’t taxed as a benefit in kind then. Definitely the Good Old
Days.

Britannic had been started in Birmingham in 1866 as the British Workmens’ and General
Insurance, changing its name in the early 1900s at about the time that its Chief Office was
built at Broad Street Corner in Birmingham and there it remained until the mid 1960s.

The cornerstone of the company was Industrial Branch Life Assurance where policies were
taken out for small sums assured and the premiums were collected weekly to coincide with
weekly payment of wages. The business was profitable and over the years it expanded so
that at its peak it owned over 300 High Street District Offices around the country.

As well as the Industrial Branch life business, the company also provided small traders
insurance, home and car insurance although these were offered more to keep the life
insurance connections from straying to other insurers rather than acting as key areas of
business.
So, when the decision was made as to which department I would go to, my Elementary
Surveying “O” level was deemed to be useful in the Fire & Accident Claims Department.

The hours were 9.00am to 5.00pm with a one hour break for lunch which allowed just enough
time to get to the shops in Kings Heath on foot if necessary. However, as lunch was free most
staff stayed on site.

Work was very different in those pre-computer days and we would dictate letters on to
desktop dictation machines and then take the files and the recorded dictation across the
corridor to a small dedicated typing pool. If a letter had to be re-done it had to be completely
re-typed ,so any sally into the pool with a correction tended to be greeted with scowls, so one
tried to anticipate and spell out all ambiguous words. Because all of this took time, there were
many urgent letters that had to be sent with the aid of Tippex and hand-written corrections.
What about the urgent photocopy that had to be attached to a letter? Well, there was only one
photocopier in the building and copying was put in a wallet and sent over to Printing &
Stationery once a day and it didn’t come back until the next day !
Like many large companies of that era, Britannic decided to provide sports facilities for its
staff and in 1920 bought Moor Green House and its surrounding grounds which were
transformed into sports pitches. Over the years a bowling green, putting green and tennis
courts were added.
In later years this purchase was to prove fortuitous because the Broad Street Corner offices
were being outgrown and in the 1960s the area was to be re-developed. The Broad Street
Corner offices overlooked the Hall of Memory and were roughly where Alpha Tower
currently stands.

Whilst new1960s office blocks tended to be characterised so often by rectangular concrete

Readers may recall the Coventry City player, Dave Busst, who sustained a shocking leg
fracture in 1996 which put paid to his mainstream footballing career. Prior to that he had
worked at Britannic and his father, John Busst (pronounced Bew st not bust) was Staff
Manager at Britannic and he took a keen interest in the Britannic teams’ sporting
performance; so much so, that it was said, half jokingly and half seriously, that if a school
leaver applied for a job and had played in the school First XI they were almost certain to get
the job.

Christmas Eve in the early days was a work day but drink and snacks were brought in and
not much work was done after lunch. However the General Manager of the time always
seemed to enjoy the day as he toured the office, department by department, wishing everyone
a Merry Christmas. I often wondered if he sampled the hospitality in the other departments
because he was always jovial by the time he reached ours and his deputy would have to prise
him away from young and pretty female staff saying, “Come along, we’ve go other
departments to visit.”
However, faced with having to send drunken girls home in taxis, shenanigans in the basement
and general lack of productivity, management decided that Christmas Eve afternoon would
become part of the regular Christmas holiday entitlement.

For many years the company put on a Summer Party where there would be a fabulous buffet
and dancing to both a band and a disco.

For some people work can be a chore but the majority of the ex employees I know view their
Britannic days with nostalgia and great affection with some saying they were the best days of
their working life.

Sadly, it wasn’t to continue. The size of the staff had outgrown the Moor Green building, and
although it had been designed so that an extra floor could be added at the top, the decision
was made to move to a new site at Wythall where a new Chief Office was constructed. The
Moor Green building was sold off for residential development but the cricket pitch has been
retained and is still used.
Ironically the decision to build a new Chief Office building was taken just as the financial
climate was changing. Britannic had always concentrated on selling lower value policies
where the premiums were collected regularly by the insurance agents but the increased time
needed to compliantly document the appropriateness of the sale combined with the cost of
collection, soon made it impossible to profitably sell these low value policies. Attempts to
sell more endowment insurances via building society link-ups came to naught.
Anyone viewing the current LV adverts for car insurance might not recognise that they were
previously known as Liverpool Victoria Assurance, a firm which had sold similar policies to
Britannic but had since switched their main thrust to home and car insurance. Unfortunately,
during the time I worked there (1969-2001) Britannic had steadily run down the different
classes of its non-life business, so wasn’t well placed to change direction like Liverpool
Victoria. Subsequently, Britannic was taken over and after changing hands a few times it is
now a subsidiary of Phoenix, who now occupy its Wythall building, and Britannic is what the
financial press often call a “zombie life fund,” i.e. no longer taking on new business but
steadily running off the policies that are still in force. Needless to say, the returns for the
policyholders have become dismal.

All in all, a sad end to a once great company.