Ecclesiastical Insurance

Ecclesiastical Insurance

Formerly	Ecclesiastical Buildings Fire Office
Industry	Financial Services
Founded	1887
Founder	Dean Herbert Gregory and John Duncan
Headquarters	Beaufort House, Brunswick Road, Gloucester , UK
Key people	Mark Hews (CEO)
Products	Church Insurance Charity Insurance Heritage Insurance Education Insurance
Brands	Ecclesiastical Insurance Office EdenTree Investment Ansvar Insurance Lycetts
Revenue	32,610,000 pound sterling (2017)
Owner	Allchurches Trust
Number of employees	6 (2018, 2019)
Parent	Ecclesiastical Insurance Group PLC
Website	ecclesiastical.com

Ecclesiastical Insurance is an insurance company in the United Kingdom founded in 1887. The head office is located in Gloucester.

The company is formally named Ecclesiastical Insurance Office plc and is authorised and regulated by the FCA and PRA. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecclesiastical Insurance Group plc which in turn is owned by Allchurches Trust, a registered charity whose objectives are to promote the Christian religion and to provide funds for other charitable purposes. Ecclesiastical Insurance Office plc has over £100m Preference Shares listed on the London Stock Exchange.

It was established by the Church of England to provide insurance cover for its buildings. It now covers a wide range of insurance business, and in 2006 it ranked 16th in liability insurance and 20th in accident insurance based on UK Net Written Premiums.

Customers include Gloucester Cathedral and St Paul's Cathedral.

History

In 1887, an independent business, the Ecclesiastical Buildings Fire Office, was founded by two MPs, three clergymen, a barrister and a clerk of the House of Lords and its directors comprised five clerics and five laymen. Two of the principal founders were Dean Herbert Gregory and John Duncan.

They were determined, after a series of high profile fires had left parishes with ruined churches and no means of restoring them, that there should be a reliable fire insurance service for parishes in their time of need. One of the founding principles was to plough any profits back into charitable work.

In April 1894 the Company announced that it would add burglary and personal accident insurance to its business, and a year later, because it was no longer restricted to fire business, the company changed its name to Ecclesiastical Insurance Office.

In 1978, the company launched its first specialist policy for schools, now known as education insurance. This was at a time when schools were starting to have more responsibility for their own budgets and more equipment.

Ecclesiastical Insurance founded its investment management arm, Ecclesiastical Investment Management Limited, in 1988, and launched the UK's first socially responsible fund, the UK Amity fund. The investment management business rebranded to EdenTree in July 2015.

Ecclesiastical was awarded Chartered Insurer status for its entire UK operations by the Chartered Insurance Institute in 2013.

In 2015 the company moved its London operations from Billiter Street to new offices in Monument Place.

Affiliation to the Church of England

Ecclesiastical has claimed to be independent of the Church of England. But there is notable confusion around this. In 2014 Sir Philip Mawer, the Chair of Allchurches Trust which owns the insurance company and all its corporate components, said the following to leading representatives from the heritage sector at a day held by the Heritage Alliance

Obviously we are very proud of the company that we own. Allchurches Trust, briefly, is a newcomer relatively, and was set up in 1972, and we hold the ownership of the company in trust. It's held in trust for the Church.

Speaking in 2015, Sue Round, senior director of EdenTree Investment Management (created by Ecclesiastical in 1984), described the affiliation to the Church of England. She said of it that the "link" could be a “double-edged sword”, attractive for some investors but off-putting for others. EdenTree, formerly known as Ecclesiastical Investments, is the investment branch of Ecclesiastical created to provide investment products for Church of England dioceses and clergy. As part of the Ecclesiastical corporate group it is fully owned by Allchurches Trust.

In 2016, Ecclesiastical celebrated a milestone of £50million donated to its charitable owner in under three years. This was celebrated by a special Thanksgiving service in Gloucester Cathedral at which a personal message of thanks from Archbishop Justin Welby was read out by Bishop Nigel Stock, honouring the achievement of the insurance group. Ecclesiastical has set itself a new target of reaching £100million for Allchurches Trust by 2020.

Elliot Review criticism

In March 2016, Archbishop Welby's office and Bishop Paul Butler came under considerable criticism for having followed instruction from Ecclesiastical to end contact with a sex abuse survivor. According to the findings of Ian Elliott, who led an independent review of the Church's handling of the case, the instruction from Ecclesiastical was not only reckless but ran counter to the church's stated policies. The Archbishop of Canterbury's office ignored repeated calls for help from the man after staff were told to avoid contact with him to protect the Church of England's financial interests. In 2017, Ian Elliott accused Ecclesiastical of 'repeated misleading comments'. In particular he addressed 'Core Groups' convened by the Church to address its pastoral responses. He was surprised that a lawyer acting for the insurer was present whilst none for the survivor was present. He commented

The Core Group meeting should have a pastoral focus but this was not my assessment of the ones that I attended. It is rooted in attitudes towards survivors which are totally misguided, misplaced, and unacceptable.

In the same article in Christian Today, Phil Johnson, chair of MACSAS (Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors) said

These core groups demonstrate the extent to which the church is more interested in financial considerations than the well-being and care for victims. Survivors haven't known or been invited with their own legal representative and this is a huge imbalance of power. It gives the insurer massive informational and strategic advantage and potential opportunity to cover its tracks.

Church of England Bishops criticism

In October 2017, Ecclesiastical received a letter from Bishops Paul Butler, Tim Thornton, and Alan Wilson criticising amongst other things: inconsistent advice to the Church and the practice of 'horse trade' legalism when dealing with CSA cases, with little concern for the impact upon survivors. The letter was copied to Justin Welby and John Sentamu, Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and to William Nye, Secretary General of the Church of England's Synod. The three bishops requested a meeting with Ecclesiastical to look at how the church and the insurer work together in relation to the difficulties in responding to survivors of child sex abuse. Ecclesiastical wrote a strong rebuttal of the letter and did not recognise the picture the bishops gave. Nor did they recognise the criticism previously made in the Elliott Review, which they had claimed in a previous statement on their website had a number of inaccuracies. Their main criticism of the Review was that they had not been given any input to the process of the Review and had been misrepresented. This conflict between the insurer and one of its main clients received considerable media attention.

Open Letter to Archbishop Welby

In November and December 2017, a survivor wrote a series of open letters to Archbishop Welby urging him to abandon Ecclesiastical as an agent of the Church's response to the abuse crisis in the wake of its controversial treatment of victims and its litigation strategies. A further letter to the Archbishop was signed by twenty others, including senior figures involved in dealing with clerical abuse. April Alexander, a senior Church of England Synod member and Christina Rees, a founding member of the Archbishops' Council, were among the signatories who sent comments to the Archbishop with Alexander saying

“Reasonable and pastoral settlement criteria” would do no more than help survivors pick up their lives again and to live decently while they do so. Without “reasonable” financial settlements there is little the Church or anyone else can do to enable these survivors to pick up their lives at all. Such a course should reduce the requirement for mediation and increase the power of the otherwise powerless in that process. To quote Peter Saunders “It is simply the right thing to do.”

and Rees commented that the Church needed to re-examine the structures that marginalise and demean those who have suffered abuse. Richard Scorer, a solicitor specialising in abuse cases, said the Archbishop

could do much better. He should use his position and wider influence to insist on real change in two key respects. First, mandatory reporting, so that those who might otherwise be tempted to collude in the cover up of abuse know that they have no option but to report it. Second, fair and just reparation for survivors, as part of a wider restorative process, so that the true extent of the harm caused by abuse is properly acknowledged. Given the extent of the abuse scandal now revealed in the CofE, the Archbishop owes survivors nothing less.

See also

• Allchurches Trust
• EdenTree Investment
• Ansvar Insurance
• Lycetts

External links

• Ecclesiastical Insurance
• "Allchurches Trust, registered charity no. 263960". Charity Commission for England and Wales.