The first known meeting of the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society was in March 1843 but there is no record of the members of the committee or its incorporation or rules.

“The great object of this Society is to afford the poorer classes of the community the means of providing for themselves and their children a decent interment at the trilling expense of a halfpenny, a penny or three pence, according to the age of the member” [1] For the remainder of the nineteenth century the Society was associated with what simple life assurance or the ‘penny policy’.

A wider range of product was being offered to customers and in 1906, to recognise this, the Society proposed to convert to a limited liability company.

This was fiercely contested through the courts and it was not until 1907 that arbitrators ruled that a subsidiary could be formed “for the transaction of business outside the Society’s scope”.

[2] LV= offers services directly to consumers, as well as through IFAs and insurance brokers, and through strategic partnerships with organisations such as ASDA, Nationwide Building Society and some trades unions.

This latter distribution channel (known collectively as LV= Broker) was boosted in October 2008 by the £150 million acquisition of Highway Insurance Group PLC,[9] following a successful public offering for its shares.

Since January 2008 the product range has been augmented by flexible retirement pensions and equity release schemes through the acquisition from Swiss Re of the former G E Life businesses in the United Kingdom.

[25] In 1999 Liverpool Victoria was heavily criticised in a report by the Personal Investment Authority for "serious and widespread compliance failings" including hiring inept staff who offered customers poor financial advice.

[28] It was announced in December 2014 that Liverpool Victoria would be acquiring the business of Teachers Assurance, subject to the approval of the latter's members.

[33] Liverpool Victoria Banking Services Limited, which came into the LV= group as part of the 1996 Frizzell acquisition, provided loans and credit cards until 2007 when the business was closed following heavy losses.

[36] Following the appointment of Mike Rogers as the new Chief Executive in 2006, LV= has undergone significant change in an effort to modernise its image and to re-invent itself[37] in the face of the gradual industry-wide decline in with-profits assurance.

[41] A distinctive green heart icon stylized from the letter 'V' has also become a symbol of the group in its advertising, playing on the visual similarity of LV= to the word love.

[43] It has sponsored the cricket County Championship since 2002, initially (2002–2005) as Frizzell[44] (the name of an old established insurance business acquired in 1996),[45] in 2006 as Liverpool Victoria and since 2007 as LV=.