Commercial Overprint Society of Great Britain

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Vol. 3 No. 12; June 1, 2006

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Guardian Assurance

by Michael Behm

Guardian Fire & Life was established in 1821; the first Company meeting being held in the City of London Tavern in Bishopsgate in November of that year. Henry Bonham-Carter (a cousin of Florence Nightingale) was the managing director from 1861–1902, the year when the comapny was renamed to Guardian Assurance.

In the mid-1950s, Guardian Assurance took over a series of insurance companies:

• In 1956, Licenses and General
• In 1957, the Caledonian Insurance Company (founded in Edinburgh in 1805 as a fire office; expanded into life insurance in 1833)
• In 1959, the Atlas Assurance Company (founded in 1808).

In 1968, the company merged with Royal Exchange Assurance (granted legal status by Royal Charter in 1720) to form the Guardian Royal Exchange Group (GRE).

In 1999, AEGON UK, part of the global AEGON nv group, acquired the Life and Pensions businesses of GRE (which included Guardian Financial Services) along with the Guardian name.

The Overprints

With all of that history and all of those acquisitions, it would be reasonable to expect that there would be a wide variety of overprints associated with Guardian Assurance. However, this appear not to be the case. From the reported patterns it appears that Guardian may have stopped using commercial overprints before the stamp issues of 1967.

Pattern	Issues	Notes
CALEDONIAN INSURANCE COMPANY	172	One example has been reported: a receipt issued on 2 July 1901.
	421, 442	Also appears inverted on 421.
	465, 488, 506, 518, 543b, 573, 613a	The spacing between the two lines varies by 0.5 mm.