The South British Insurance Company was founded in 1872, in Auckland, largely as a response to the high premiums being charged for marine insurance by overseas based companies. The first premises were at 29 Queen Street, and business commenced on 2 September 1872. Expansion was swift. By 1875 there were representatives in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart. Within a decade the company had set up offices or agents in the Pacific, India, Japan, South Africa and the United States. By 1883 South British had expanded to 20 countries on all seven continents. From the late 19thC onwards South British made many acquisitions of rival insurance companies in ambitious expansion plans.
South British’s first Wellington office was designed by Thomas Turnbull in 1878 and built for the Colonial Bank of New Zealand. The building was composed of two adjoining brick, plastered structures of two storeys, the south portion of which was occupied by the bank while the north end, 326 Lambton Quay, was leased by South British. It is not known when South British first occupied their portion but they were certainly in the building by the 1880s. South British bought their half of their building by the 24th September 1881 and it remained their Wellington offices until it was demolished in 1936 to make way for the construction of the present building. The Commercial Bank of Australia bought the bank’s portion in 1914. Curiously, although these buildings used exactly the same design elements, the C.B.A portion had three arched windows in the equivalent space occupied by two on South British. C.B.A removed their portion of the building two years before South British demolished the other.
The new South British Building was designed by Auckland architect M.K Draffin, who also designed the building the Auckland office it occupied. This was the only occasion where the company had its own building designed and built, and it had occupied the building from the start. The engineers were Gray and Gulliver, of Auckland and the builders Fletcher Construction.
When finished the building completed a group of three similarly sized commercial buildings along the western side of Lambton Quay that include the CBA Building(1936) and the Prudential Assurance Building (1934-45). When first built, the building was largely filled with South British Insurance Co. employees and it remained that way until the company departed the building. Guardian Trust and Executor’s of New Zealand was an early tenant that was closely linked to South British and occupied the building as long as its landlord. Guardian Trust was later joined by United Insurance and for a period three insurance companies lived under the same roof.
In 1976, approval was given for a six storey building to be erected at the rear of the original building, and this was duly completed the following year. An earlier proposal for the erection of a podium/tower building on the amalgamated sites of South British and C.B.A was approved in 1971, but no further steps were taken, perhaps because of the ultimate merger of South British with N.Z.I in October 1982 and the C.B.A. with the Bank of New South Wales.
The merger resulted in the immediate sale of the Wellington building. It was bought by Prudential Insurance Ltd., already with a mind to the possibilities offered by a larger site. The following year the adjacent C.B.A. Building was purchased, thus reuniting the three portions of land for the first time since the first town acres were subdivided in the early 1840s.
In the late 1990s a developer applied for consent to demolish all three Prudential owned buildings and replace them with a single tall tower. This was opposed by the NZHPT, provoked a public outcry, and was finally resolved by the Environment Court. The tower was never built and the South British Building has been regularly tenanted since Prudential bought the building.
