What do wartime staff magazines, colonial underwriting rates, and a forgotten female trailblazer reveal about the history of insurance?

In this episode of Humanizing Insurance, I’m joined by Mollie Horne, archivist at Aberdeen Group, to explore what insurance archives uncover about the people behind the policies.

We step into Second World War staff magazines, read letters from employees on active service, and revisit the London office destroyed during the Blitz - where only an envelope of ash from the policy safe survived. We discuss how duplicate ledgers were preserved during wartime, what historic “extra rates” books reveal about underwriting and social assumptions, and how internal sports like the Davidson Cup reflected company culture across offices in London and Edinburgh.

We also spotlight Edith Beesley, one of the first women in insurance management, who flew to Paris on business in 1920 and challenged expectations in a male-dominated industry.

Finally, we look forward. As insurance becomes increasingly digital, we explore why electronic records may be more fragile than the paper ledgers that have survived for centuries — and what future archivists might struggle to recover from our era.

Behind every policy is a person. And insurance history, at its heart, is social history.

Humanizing Insurance is bought to you by Daniel Grimwood-Bird. It's a passion project, driven by the evergreen phrase 'Insurance is a people industry'.

Through each conversation, we explore the stories, experiences, and ideas that make our world of insurance more human - from the pioneers and innovators shaping its future to the quiet leaders who hold its traditions together.

This podcast exists to remind us that behind every policy, premium, and claim is a person, someone making decisions, taking risks, and protecting what matters most.

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