Succumbing to a takeover by Zurich of Switzerland would cap more than 300 years of history for RSA, which was founded in London as The Sun Fire Office in 1710 and expanded through transforming mergers.
The group, which insured the home of the explorer Captain James Cook and the house where Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, was created in its most familiar form in 1959, when Sun Insurance merged with Alliance, to form Sun Alliance.
In 1996, Royal and Sun Alliance came into being following a merger with Royal Insurance Holdings.
The recent history of RSA, as it became in 2008, has been littered with difficulties, particularly when its existence came under threat because of exposure to asbestos-related claims.
RSA found itself under fire at the same time in the US, when it fell out with banks over insurance provided to students who had taken out loans to become truck drivers.
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Andy Haste,who took charge in 2003, eventually pulled the insurer out of America. Mr Haste, whose predecessor Bob Mendelsohn had already offloaded the fund management business to Friends Ivory & Sime, also sold off its life funds to a group run by the insurance entrepreneur Clive Cowdery in a deal that made RSA a purely general insurer.
Mr Haste made many acquisitions, boosting its presence in Latin America but failing to buy Aviva’s general insurance arm in Britain.
After he stepped down four years ago, he was replaced by Simon Lee, the head of RSA’s international business. Mr Lee’s tenure proved to be short-lived after the insurer was hit by a £200 million reserving scandal at its Irish arm and issued three profit warnings within weeks because of unexpectedly high payouts against bad weather claims.
For Zurich, a takeover would transform its presence in Britain, where it established a branch office in 1922.
Now one of the biggest providers of motor insurance, Zurich only established a telephone salesforce for general cover in 1993, although it has been in the life assurance business since 1960.
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Zurich employs roughly the same number of staff in Britain as RSA — about 7,000 spread across offices in London, Manchester, Cardiff and Cheltenham among others.
It also sells policies via Endsleigh, which specialises in students and young professionals, and Navigators & General, which underwrites pleasure boats.