Regional overviews: Europe

Our strategic priorities:

Scale, growth and capital

• Leverage the scale of the organisation
• Seize the unique growth opportunities present in the region
• Generate capital for the group

How will we achieve this?

• Access to enormous potential customer base through bancassurance
• Expertise in product innovation driven by a deep understanding of individual markets
• Low cost platforms in southern Europe provide opportunities for profitable growth

Progress in 2007:

Deliver on target integration benefits in Ireland

• We successfully integrated the life businesses of Ark Life and Hibernian and now, from a single location, we are able to deliver new product offerings across both distribution channels
• We completed the launch of a single new business platform which further cements our relationship with AIB and the integration of our two life businesses in Ireland

Continue to focus on higher-margin unit-linked products in France

• We expanded our unit-linked offering through the launch of a new AFER fund and continued to encourage Fourgous** transfers which enable policyholders to diversify their fund

Generate increased sales in the Netherlands through focus on SME pension contracts and developing “white label” products

• Our pensions strategy resulted in higher new pension premiums, including several large group sales, most notably in the final quarter of the year
• We now offer a white-label health product through a leading pharmacy chain

Grow faster than the market in northern Europe where low growth was expected in 2007

• Aviva’s growth in northern Europe in 2007 of 22% compared favourably to the overall market growth which was negative in France

Capture opportunities arising from increasing wealth in Russia and central and eastern Europe by continuing to invest in our business

• The merger of our Turkish life and pensions business with AK Emeklilik, the life and pensions business of the Sabanci Holdings Group was completed on 31 October 2007
• The acquisition of Certinvest, a fund management company in Romania, will allow Aviva Romania to provide high quality asset management services to its pension, investment and life insurance clients

Looking forward:

Our medium-term targets are to:

• Grow life new business premiums and new business contribution by an average 10% pa to 2010
• Realise cost savings in our mature businesses of £50 million by end 2009
• Meet or beat a combined operating ratio of 98%

 

** The Fourgous amendment of 2005 enabled the tax efficient transfer of existing 100% Euro funds into more balanced Euro and unit-linked portfolios.