Move over, Picasso; we’ve got Titanic’s insurance policy

The insurance industry is not just one of numbers, it’s one of stories.

That’s the thought behind a new endeavor to create a museum in the heart of London dedicated to the industry, the Financial Times reported Friday.

“We need to tell [people] how widespread the insurance business is,” industry veteran Reg Brown, a 77-year-old who spent decades working at Lloyd’s of London and was also president of the Chartered Institute of Insurance, told the newspaper. “It’s not just singing waiters and car insurance and household insurance, which is what they see on the television adverts . . . We want to tell them it’s a lot more than that.”

With a list of supporters that include several large insurance companies and brokers, “Insurance Museum” is a working title, although “The Museum of Risk” is another possibility, according to the article.

And there is no shortage of material, Financial News points out: “The idea of insurance and risk management goes back thousands of years to Mesopotamia and China, and London has been one of the (centers) of the industry since policies were first discussed at Edward Lloyd’s coffee house in the 1680s.”

The project is likely to kickstart with a “pop up” museum sometime later this year.