Chartered Insurance Institute - Aldermanbury, London, UK - Coats of Arms on Waymarking.com

This website gives a history of the Chartred Insurance Institute (CII):
"The heraldry of The CII

History:

The first insurance institute was founded in Manchester in 1873.
Eight ‘institutes’ were in existence in 1896 and the ninth was about to be established when James Ostler suggested that all should be brought together.
On 12 March 1897 The Federation of Insurance Institutes of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence.
In 1908 a new constitution was proposed and accepted and The Insurance Institute of Great Britain and Ireland came into being.
In 1912 the Institute was incorporated by Royal Charter and The Chartered Insurance Institute was formed. One of the requirements was that the new Chartered Body should have an identifying emblem and so the first ‘device’ was designed and this remained in existence until 1933.

Coat of Arms:

On 25 September 1933 The CII received a grant of arms by patent of the King of Arms. Its Coat of Arms is made in the following terms
“Azure between two chains fesswise, three anchors argent in chief, a salamander in flames and in base a garb or”

The Grant of Arms was made a year before the Insurance Hall was opened by King George V accompanies by Queen Mary on 28 June 1934 so the new Coat of Arms was incorporated into the design of the building.

The Full Achievement:

It is not every corporate body that can acquire a right to armorial bearings. This privilege is reserved to those bodies that are of sufficient importance and quality to be eligible to ‘bear and use’ arms and crest. An even greater privilege for those of more considerable stature is to have in addition the right to supporters each side of the shield, just as the lion of England and Unicorn of Scotland bear up and maintain the shield of the Royal Arms.

What does it all mean?:

The arms and other heraldic attributes all mean something and have been specially composed to be distinctive of the Institute.
The shield is the most important element in the composition of armorial bearings. The CII’s shield of arms typifies the main (original) classes of insurance – fire, marine and life.
It does this by the salamander, which has legendary powers of surviving in its flames (and appears also in the arms of The British Insurance association (now the Association of British Insurers); by the anchors, one of which features prominently in the arms of Lloyd’s; and by the garb or wheatsheaf. The security that insurance provides in general is denoted by the chains with their links banding the shield. (‘Fesswise’ as mentioned above means that the chains are placed horizontally across the shield) However, security is also provided by accident insurance and so there is a link here also to the fourth main class of insurance.

Protection and preservation can be said to be symbolised by the arm in armour issuing out of a Saxon crown that constitutes the crest. The Insurance Hall is located on the site of what was once a Saxon palace hence the link to the Saxon crown. The hand is grasping a sword, but instead of being held by the hilt and being wielded aggressively, the sword is neutralised by being held by its blade, just as insurance mitigates harm and hurt. It is also intended, as the sword of St Paul, a 700 year old feature of the arms of the City of London, to represent the City which is the main centre of insurance.

The supporters are securely based on paved steps. The base step represents Manchester, the city in which the first insurance institute was established, the second, Glasgow, where the second institute was formed. Together, the steps are another allusion to London as well as to the other cities and towns where insurance offices were established. They represent the part that The CII plays nationally, one supporter being a variant of the royal lion of England, the other of the unicorn of Scotland in that both have fish tails indicating that the former is a sea-lion and the latter a sea-unicorn thus commemorating the Institute’s overseas activities. However, the unicorn is also a mythological creature and so represents those things that we do not yet know. To demonstrate this further, both supporters are clasping books, ready to be opened. That the Institute is a professional body responsible for education and the award of qualifications, in the course of which instruction is given in the principles that govern insurance, their application to claims as well as actuarial and other forms of calculation and the keeping of accurate records are all heraldically represented by these books.

Finally the Institute’s motto, loosely interpreted as meaning ‘knowledge and counsel’, which has existed since the First Device was designed, appears engraved in the edge of the base pavement.. This emphasises the dependence of all engaged in insurance upon sound knowledge and wise advice, owed as much by the institute to those who seek its aid as by the professional insurer as a member of the Institute to his policyholders."

Source CII website.