We wrote to you in October to announce our plans to sell Aldermanbury as we look to move to a new office location. We are pleased to confirm we will be moving in June, to 21 Lombard Street, 1st Floor, EC3V 9AH, next door to the original site of the Lloyd’s Coffee House, where the origins of insurance can be traced back to.
Our customer service and support teams are unaffected. Our contact numbers will remain the same.
The new office will have a dedicated conference space for up to 50 people for CII events as well as a welcoming and contemporary area for staff and visiting members called the Knowledge Lounge. This will be a touch-down working space with access to our Knowledge Services and online resource centre.
Our Knowledge Services team will continue to provide their services in the new office including offering access to items stored in offsite locations. We will have a small selection of our most popular or interesting books physically available in the Knowledge Lounge, but all our current library and archive items will still be easily available from our storage facility, which already houses the majority of our historic collection. We are progressively digitising our older and most fragile books and documents and all our current study texts and accompanying materials are electronically available.
Just to remind you, the Aldermanbury building is being sold to the City of London and they are keen to protect and promote it.
The Great Hall will be shut for refurbishment from 28 September. We have negotiated alternative venues for events affected by the closure and when the Hall reopens, a commitment has been made to allow us first call on an agreed number of days of use, for ourselves, our sister bodies and the wider profession. The City want the Hall to remain a popular venue.
We will be taking a selection of our heritage articles to the new office, including facsimiles of the windows, insignia and the Royal Charter where they will be displayed. We are being ably advised by professional archivists and a small group of expert members which we will be asking former President of the CII, Reg Brown to chair.
We have already had expressions of interest in the collection of fire marks and some other heritage items. All remaining articles will be placed in safe storage with the intention of holding an auction in aid of the Insurance Charities. If you have interest in any specific items now, please let Customer Service know.
We have committed to modernise our organisation to keep relevant to our ever-developing profession. Our new office is open plan, light and bright, fitted out with modern technology and in the centre of things.
Sian
Sian Fisher, CEO