Dame Amanda Blanc

Amanda Blanc: Today we are announcing that Aviva has delivered another outstanding set of results in 2025.

Group operating profit rose, IFRS return on equity increased and capital and cash generation are growing.

Our final dividend is up 10% year-on-year. And we are resuming the share buyback, now at a higher level of £350m.

Every business contributed to these results.

In General Insurance, premiums are up 18%.

In Wealth, we are extending our number one position with over £230bn of assets.

In Retirement both Individual Annuity and Equity Release sales were up double digits.

We have now achieved our Group 2026 targets a year early and have raised our ambitions with new targets.

This is just the next step in our journey. There is more long-term potential beyond this three-year horizon and today I will talk about three of these opportunities.

First, in General Insurance there is plenty of room to grow – unlocking value from Direct Line, expanding partnerships, scaling SME in Canada, and building our Lloyd’s presence.

Secondly, in Wealth, where we have leading Workplace and Adviser Platform businesses. And we are expanding fast - in advice with Succession Wealth, and scaling in Direct Wealth. We are on track for our £280m profit ambition in 2027, and Wealth will soon account for almost 10% of Group earnings.

And finally, Artificial Intelligence, where we have a greater opportunity than most. With millions of customers, ability to deploy and re-use at scale, capacity to invest, and most importantly, proprietary customer and claims data. We are well positioned for this shift.

We have developed AI capabilities from claims summarisation and call-wrap to medical underwriting. Our focus now is on bigger end-to-end opportunities where AI can transform areas like customer service, underwriting, and operations.

So, Aviva is in a stronger position than ever – and we are uniquely placed for longer term success.

We are the UK’s national champion, and the only diversified insurer.

We are accelerating capital-light.

We have an outstanding customer franchise of more than 25 million customers globally and the UK’s most trusted insurance brand.

We have proprietary data at scale – driving better customer outcomes.

All of this fuels our superior returns for shareholders – with strong and sustainable earnings growth, an attractive dividend, and regular share buyback.

These strengths, and many more, give me deep confidence that we will unlock the full potential of Aviva in the years ahead.

Steve Sedgwick: Dame Amanda Blanc is the Group Chief Executive of Aviva. Amanda, good morning to you. 

It's always that game, isn't it, where Karen and I and Ben get the numbers about a second before we get to you and we're trying to find the bits you don't want us to ask you.

Amanda Blanc: You know, you've had, what, minutes now? I mean, it’s 7:07, so I'm expecting… 

Steve Sedgwick: Tell us about the numbers. I think you've alluded to previously that you're going to hit your targets a year early. Just go through the situation as you see it. 

Amanda Blanc: So we announced in November that we were on track to hit our 2026 targets one year early. And we've done that. So, you know, that's really good news. The operating profit up 25% - I think that's a really strong performance from the business. And you know, I won't repeat all the numbers that you said there, Steve, but I think if we look at each of the business lines, they're all performing really well. So the general insurance business is growing by 18%, really good performance on the combined operating ratio, which is the metric we use in general insurance. But the wealth business is also really sort of firing on all cylinders - £11 billion increase in net flows. A really strong performance across the business.

Steve Sedgwick: I want to know about the next set of targets. If you reach your 2026 targets, or the three year targets a year early, I guess the markets want to hear about the next targets, and then they'll make a judgment on whether you're being ambitious enough. 

Amanda Blanc: So we set new targets in November. We'll obviously restate those today at 11% EPS growth, a cash remittance target, and a greater than 20% return on equity. These are really ambitious targets. 11% EPS, I think, is a really strong target, helped by the acquisition of direct line, but also the strong underlying performance of the business. So, you know, we’re very, very excited about that. One thing I didn't mention is the share buyback, which we've resumed today at £350 million. That, with the 10% dividend uplift, is a really strong shareholder performance as well. 

Steve Sedgwick: Just a quick final one for me, before Ben and Karen come in. I know how exacting you can be about getting the best performance out of your business as well. Where do you feel actually the biggest improvements could be made where, okay, the numbers are great, but actually where you feel you just need to do a little bit more work?

Amanda Blanc: So I think more work in Canada. So, the Canadian performance is good… 

Steve Sedgwick: But Commercial Lines were down. 

Amanda Blanc: Commercial lines, we exited some underperforming portfolios, which is sort of standard for an insurance company. But I still think there's more work for us to do in Canada. We've increased the profitability this year, but we can do better there. I think the big opportunity is in the wealth space. You know, the market is huge, and we have got four and a half million workplace pension customers. So, you know, we have a really exciting opportunity to take advantage of the regulatory tailwinds that are coming there with targeted support. So, you know, that's it. The aim to help those 80 million people in the UK who are not able to take any advice or do not feel advice is for them, and that, you know, this is an opportunity for Aviva to be able to help them. 

Karen Tso: Can I get into the insurance lines? I can see insurance premiums up 27%. We were talking to a reinsurer the other day, and the message that came through was that perhaps property is cooling to an extent but casualty very strong still when it comes to pricing on premiums, what would you say about what you're saying? Does that reflect a very similar story? 

Amanda Blanc: So, some of our growth is down to the acquisitions that we've done. So we have two acquisitions coming into the numbers, Direct Line and the Probitas acquisition, which was the Lloyd's business that we bought a year and a half ago. But I think every product line is performing slightly different, Karen. So you've got the commercial motor, where you're seeing good rate increases. Commercial property, maybe not, not so much. For Aviva, because we're a big UK home player, the SME business for us is really strong, and we are still seeing some smaller rating increases there. So it's really difficult to look at it. You have to look at it line by line. But I think the benefit of being a scale player, you know, 22 million customers in the UK, is that you can actually allocate your capital according to the different lines where you believe you can make the better return. 

Karen Tso: Well, let me flip that around, because when you're a scale player, you also get more impacted by the macro. And we are now talking about events in the Middle East that may have consequences for the global economy. If we see oil prices sustained at a higher rate, whether that starts to shave numbers off the growth rate, whether we see inflation come back into the mix, how are you thinking about the fast-moving pieces in the Middle East so far? 

Amanda Blanc: I've been the CEO of Aviva for the last six years, and we have seen various things happen. Starting with Covid, then moving into the supply chain shocks following the Ukraine war. So I think that as an insurer, we are more than used to seeing these supply chain shocks and how that comes through. So for us, for example, in the repair of vehicles, how do we make sure that we've got the parts to be able to do that? So it's about being ahead of this and pricing ahead of that. If you can see that there's an inflation shock coming, then, you know, don't wait for that to happen, then start to price for that. I think, you know, we're still only what, five days into this situation, but I think that all of the teams are constantly looking at the data, and we have the benefit of lots of data to be able to see, are we seeing things coming through in the data, which means we need to react. 

Ben Boulos: Amanda, and we speak a lot about the impact of artificial intelligence on the programme. And I just wonder, as a big insurance company, if I were running a business about to integrate AI into my operations, I'd be thinking, well, if it goes wrong, I need some cover. I just wonder, how much of a growth opportunity you see there? Do you have products already available that will ensure against losses or fallout from AI going wrong? 

Amanda Blanc: Well, first of all, let's think about the opportunity with artificial intelligence. For Aviva, we have been using artificial intelligence for a decade. So 98% of our personal lines products are underwritten today using machine learning. So, you know, I think when we hear all of the noise around the technology, we're sort of saying, okay, yes, generative AI is the next step, but we've been using it for the last 10 years. And if I think about, you know, the way that we are approaching this, it's about our 22 million customers, the proprietary data sets that we have; all of the claims data, all of the underwriting data, all of the customer data, spread across all of those different product lines. For us, we see this as a real opportunity. How do we personalise our propositions to our customers with the proprietary data sets that we have. So the technology is one thing, but actually the application of that technology, that's a completely different thing. And you have to have customers, you have to have data, and you have to have the ability to pull all of that together. So we feel confident about that.

Ben Boulos: Just to get your take on the current UK economic picture, we have the spring statement yesterday. How do you feel the economic and business environment is for an organisation like yours and others? 

Amanda Blanc: Yes. So if you look at the spring statement numbers, obviously you saw the reduction in the gross outlook and the increase in unemployment which are two, you know, not great metrics. But if we look at it as Aviva, we're a big investor in the UK. We invest over £100 billion in the UK, £40 billion of annuity pension holders. So for us, we think that the positive messages around growth, around infrastructure, those are all good things. I think it's like, I think I've said this before, it's like looking at a jigsaw. You see that you can see the outer bits. What you can't see is what the picture is going to look like when it's all complete. So, we would just urge the government to sort of pull all of that together so that we can continue to invest in the UK, to make it easy for us to invest, you know, our own money and our policyholder money for the benefit of the UK and the benefit of our policyholders. 

Steve Sedgwick: Amanda, you have an immensely powerful position and when you met the chancellor at the end of January, I don't know if you've met her since, but I know you met her at the end of January, did you explain to her the error of her ways and how she's not encouraging people to save, and how they're not encouraging people to put money by for their pensions.  In fact, making it much worse because of their changes to commitments and salary sacrifice as well. I'm sure you, being a very forthright person, told Rachel Reeves that she’s very wrong?

Amanda Blanc: So look, I think from a salary sacrifice perspective, we are disappointed with the measures that were taken on that. If we look at the UK today, 12 and a half million people are not saving enough money into their pension. Therefore, why would you put something in place which sort of makes it more difficult for them to do that? So I understand that, you know, the economics are difficult, but I genuinely feel that we need to be encouraging people to save more. And there is a lot of positive initiatives. If you think about the retail investment initiatives, those are all positive initiatives coming through from the government. But I think this point on salary sacrifice for us, and you know, you've seen the Association of British Insurers have written in the last, you know, 48 hours, to say we really would urge that you really think about this, because discouraging people to invest in their pensions is not a good idea. 

Steve Sedgwick: And do you think it’s going to fall on deaf ears, or was Rachel actually saying, yes, you're right Amanda?

Amanda Blanc: Well, look, Steve, one thing that I will tell you is I will just keep saying what I believe is right for our customers and for Aviva, and I genuinely believe that for our customers, this is not a good idea. So we'll just keep saying that. And you know, I am pretty relentless, so I'll just keep saying it and see what happens. 

Steve Sedgwick: Okay, well, let's hope the politicians listen. Really nice to see you, and we do appreciate you coming in. I know you've got a stunningly busy day, so thank you very much for coming in. Amanda Blanc thank you very much indeed. Chief Executive Officer of Aviva.