Home / Types of Life Insurance Policies / - Norwich Union
Norwich Union is the largest life-insurer in the UK and is part of the Aviva Group. Norwich Union has around 35,000 employees in the UK.
Norwich Union was founded in 1797 in Norwich when Thomas Bignold, a 36 year old merchant and banker formed the “Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire”. To begin with Norwich Union was formed as a mutual insurer.
During 1808 Thomas Bignold formed a 2nd mutual called Norwich Union Life Insurance Society. In 1823 “Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire” demutualised and was absorbed into the Norwich General Assurance Company.
It was normal at the time for insurance companies that insured against fire to have their own fire brigade which were designed to protect only the society’s policyholders property. The last private brigade was given up in 1929 in Worcester.
In 1997, Norwich Union demutualised and floated as a public limited company on the London Stock Exchange.
In 2000, Norwich Union merged with CGU, which itself was formed from the merger of General Accident and Commercial Union in October 1998.
Upon merging they formed the group CGNU which went on to become the Aviva group.
Aviva
Aviva was founded in 2000 and currently has around 54,000 employees worldwide and revenue of over £35billion per annum.
Aviva plc is the world's fifth largest insurance group, the biggest insurance group in the UK and the second largest insurance group in Canada .
The company was formerly called CGNU, and was created by a merger of Norwich Union and CGU plc (itself created by the 1998 merger of Commercial Union and General Accident) in 2000. The Aviva name was adopted in July 2002.
03 July 2008 17:55:57
An outbreak of the bug Clostridium Difficile has led to a record number of pensioners in Scotland contracting the virus which could effect UK life insurance for those that have C Diff.
Figures showed that there were 1861 cases of C Diff among the over 65s between January and March of this year - a 14 per cent increase from a similar time period in 2007.
These figures are released following an outbreak at Vale of Leven Hospital in west Dunbartonshire, where nine people were killed and a further 50 were infected with the C Diff bug.
Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said that she had asked health boards to ensure systems for tackling hospital infections are being followed.
She said: "Scotland has one of the most comprehensive sets of policies and procedures to manage healthcare associated infection (HAI) in Europe.
"However, recent events at the Vale of Leven show how vital it is for boards to ensure that these policies and procedures are applied to a high standard."
Normal fatality rates for people that contract C Diff are at 7 per cent, however at Vale Leven this increased to 30 per cent - when taking into account the further 16 deaths directly linked to the outbreak.
Contracting a superbug may well effect patients life insurance policies.
03 July 2008 17:48:03
A government fertility watchdog has given the go-ahead for stem cell research that will be used to study fatal heart diseases.
Warwick Medical School researchers will use part-human and part-animal embryos for the first time to carry out their study which could eventually have an effect on the cost of life insurance policies for patients with heart disease.
The team plans to create embryos that are 99.9 per cent human DNA and 0.1 per cent pig DNA and stem cells extracted from the embryos will be grown into human heart cells.
Chemicals will be used to destroy the pig DNA before the researchers grow the human heart cells.
Justin St John, heading up the research team, explained what they hope to achieve from the process: "Ultimately they will help us understand where some of the problems associated with these diseases arise, and they could also provide models for the pharmaceutical industry to test new drugs."
Licenses have been granted to two other British teams that are hoping to create hybrid embryos but neither planned to extract animal DNA from the stem cells first.
Conditions such as heart disease can often have an impact on the cost of UK life insurance.
02 July 2008 17:03:39
A baby born with half a heart has just two weeks to live unless a donor can be found, doctors have told his parents.
Born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, Theo Davies is currently on a life support machine which can only keep him alive for a short period of time, unless he has a transplant.
Talking about her desperation, Theo's mother Rebecca Giles, said: "People say 'Oh, it must be a nightmare for you'. But it's worse than that. I can't think of a worse situation to be in."
She continued: "Our child will die in two weeks unless we can find a heart donor. But to find another heart for Theo means that another child will die."
Theo has already had to endure five major operations since he was born and survived his heart stopping for an hour last week.
Surgeons in the US are about to undertake the first implantation of a Jarvik heart pump which, it is hoped, could help to solve a shortage of donor hearts.
One of the biggest difficulties facing people with heart problems is securing regular life insurance.
