This is the first year that Norwich Union has produced a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. We report on our performance, progress and achievements in 2007, and look at the challenges we faced during the year.

Our business comprises Norwich Union, Aviva Global Services and RAC:

Norwich Union is the UK’s largest insurer, with about 15% market share. It provides life, pensions and investment products to over 6 million customers, and is one of the largest financial adviser providers.

Aviva Global Services (AGS)
comprises our offshore operations in Pune, Noida (Delhi), Bangalore and Chennai in India, and Colombo in Sri Lanka, and provides operational support to our UK insurance operations.

RAC is one of the UK’s leading motoring organisations, providing a range of services – roadside assistance, windscreen repair and replacement, driving lessons, vehicle inspections and checks, legal and financial services, and traffic and travel information – to some 9 million members. The RAC business includes the British School of Motoring (BSM), RAC Auto Windscreens, RAC Direct Insurance and vehicle-check specialists HPI.

CSR strategy and governance

Strategy

Our parent company Aviva provides the framework for how we set our strategy and manage CSR. We share a common set of values and vision for how we think business should be done. The financial services industry faces major challenges and issues which our businesses must identify and respond to if we are to maintain our leading position. Climate change and, in particular, extreme weather events are increasingly important risks to insurance markets. Demographic change presents the same risks and uncertainties to the life and pensions industry.

A robust, defined CSR strategy provides the right framework to respond to these issues, for our approach to doing business, managing our people and engaging with stakeholders. We listen to a wide range of stakeholders who either affect, or are affected by, our business. They include:

• our parent company
• customers
• employees
• communities
• suppliers and partners
• NGOs and pressure groups.

Our job is to work with our stakeholders to ensure that we understand and act on the issues that matter most to them.

Governance

Overall direction for CSR strategy rests with a Board CSR Committee, which reports regularly to the Aviva plc Board. Members of the Executive Committee manage the day-to-day operations of Aviva, and the Board CSR Committee is the most senior forum for discussing CSR issues. In May 2007, Russell Martin, HR Director, assumed executive-level responsibility for CSR in the UK. Russell reports on CSR matters to the Board CSR committee and is a member of Aviva’s Global CSR Advisory Group.

We are committed to best practice in corporate governance. We comply with the UK Combined Code on Corporate Governance and are regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

Risk Management Framework

Norwich Union has a Risk Management Framework in place to identify, assess, manage and report all significant risks to business objectives, including those around CSR.

Examples of the group policies included in the framework include CSR, environment, people, customers, purchasing and supply management. A director of Norwich Union takes responsibility for each policy to ensure that the communication, implementation, monitoring of compliance and reporting is carried out.

Benchmarking

In 2007, we submitted our entry to Business in the Community’s Corporate Responsibility Index, the UK’s leading benchmark of responsible business. These results will help us to integrate and improve our CSR programme by providing a systematic approach to managing, measuring and reporting on business impacts in society and on the environment. Further information is available at www.bitc.org.uk/what_we_do/cr_index/index/.