Composite model

Excelling in both life and general insurance

Our life and general insurance operations are excellent businesses in their own right, with strong market positions, good growth prospects, and attractive returns. In addition to their inherent strengths, there are significant advantages of running both of these businesses under one roof.

Driving out composite value from the business

Structural advantage

By virtue of the diversification of our risks across the group, under the current Internal Capital Allocation regime, we can hold 30-40% less capital to write new general insurance business than the life and general insurance businesses would be required to hold on a standalone basis. We anticipate that this benefit will be reinforced under Solvency II.

Scale and efficiency

There are clear scale benefits and cost synergies to having life and general insurance under one roof, including the operational benefits of shared back-office functions, IT and finance resources, and the opportunity to transfer skills and capabilities across the group.

The diversity of our business drives more resilient cashflows and earnings than single line insurers through the cycle.

Differentiation

Our expertise in both general and life insurance not only provides cross-sell opportunities, with our single, trusted brand able to meet our customers’ complete insurance needs, but it also makes Aviva an attractive business partner, and has allowed us to develop global leadership in bancassurance. For example, our general insurance partnership with Santander in the UK was renewed in September and has been extended to include life insurance protection products from 2011.