The assurance process covers the entire CSR summary report (PDF 1.57MB).

To the management of Aviva plc

The SMART Company was commissioned by Aviva plc to review its “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) Report 2007 – a summary (the Report).

Scope of work

We have undertaken a series of activities to review the progress made in CSR at Aviva during the year in order to provide a basis on which to challenge the Report’s content. We have completed the following activities:

• Interviewed Aviva’s group Chairman, CEO and chairman of the board CSR committee, as well as key senior management and functional staff identified as having group responsibilities for the CSR programme.
• Interviewed CSR-nominated managers from seven of Aviva’s largest businesses to understand the process for managing and reporting progress on CSR within those businesses.
• Reviewed a selection of group CSR documentation such as: board reports on CSR, minutes of the board CSR committee, minutes of the CSR review group and CSR steering group meetings, and guidance documents on CSR reporting.
• Reviewed the CSR progress reports received from each of the Aviva businesses covering CSR activities during the year.
• Ascertained that information in the Report has been correctly transposed from internal reporting processes.
• Reviewed media and carried out desk-based research to ensure that material CSR issues/events were not overlooked in the Report or given inappropriate focus (too much or too little).
• In addition, for the carbon emissions accounting and quantification, further work was done to understand the systems in place with reference to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.

The above work allowed us to identify areas of strength and improvement opportunities in Aviva’s CSR programme, reporting and assurance. These will be communicated in detail to Aviva’s senior management in a separate management report.

Summary conclusion

Based on the scope of work described above, we conclude that the Report’s content is consistent with evidence obtained during the course of our work and that it provides a fair representation of the company’s CSR performance.

• The SMART Company
• London, 2 April 2007

(information on our competencies, independence and impartiality is available on our website: www.thesmartcompany.net)