Supporting the human rights and anti-modern slavery agenda
Our human rights policy sets out the Group’s aim to respect human rights and identifies the key rightsholders and issues for our business.
In 2025 we published our latest Anti Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement.
In 2025
- We published our 9th Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement.
- We outlined our action plan following a comprehensive human rights saliency assessment across our core markets in the UK, Ireland, and Canada.
- Our business ethics, human rights, and modern slavery training continues to be rolled out annually to specialist staff. By the end of 2024, 1,302 Aviva colleagues had completed the training since its launch in 2020.
- We renewed our membership with Slave-Free Alliance to continue our commitment to addressing the risk of modern slavery in our operations and supply chains.
- We continued our partnership with Business for Responsibility (also known as BSR), a sustainable business network and consultancy focused on helping companies improve their sustainability practices. BSR will help us better understand our human rights impacts and identify the most salient issues across our operations and value chain.
- We are committed to integrating human rights standards and frameworks into our investment activities, including decision making and engagement across all asset classes. As a financial institution, we also recognise that building our leverage may require engaging with other investors, policymakers, and wider stakeholders to address market failures which enable human rights abuses, including modern slavery, to persist in our society and in our investment portfolios.
- We continue to outline our aim to respect human rights approach in our policies and guidelines, including The Aviva Human Rights Policy. In 2023 we improved key sections regarding human rights risk screening and our responsibility to use our influence to proactively promote human rights. We plan on demonstrating our aim through our actions and improved policies and standards year on year.
Externally and in our supply chain:
- We continue to strengthen our engagement with key suppliers through targeted modern slavery risk assessments. In 2024, we completed 13 assessments, selecting suppliers based on their potential exposure to modern slavery risks. These included both remote evaluations—where we reviewed suppliers’ management systems—and in-person site visits that incorporated direct worker feedback to ensure a more comprehensive understanding of on-the-ground practices. We also deepened our collaboration with our international investment, Aviva India, by assessing two of their high-risk suppliers with the support of the Slave-Free Alliance (SFA).
- The SFA also supported us in assessing modern slavery risks within our subsidiaries, Succession Wealth and Probitas, helping to identify areas for improvement and reinforce good practices.
- No cases of modern slavery were identified within Aviva’s operations or supply chain in 2024. We remediated a high-risk issue identified in 2023 involving two third-party suppliers to Aviva India, where workers had not been compensated for time spent in mandatory training. In 2024, we conducted a thorough investigation, including worker interviews and document reviews, and ensured that 32 affected workers received appropriate reimbursement. We also confirmed that no further wage deductions or retaliation occurred. In addition, we issued corrective action plans to all suppliers assessed during the year to strengthen their systems and practices for preventing modern slavery. We continue to encourage our suppliers to align with ethical employment standards, including joining the Living Wage Foundation and adopting Living Hours principles
- Finally, we use our influence and connections to bring others together and enhance the industry’s wider understanding of, and impact on human rights. Moreover, we continue to work with the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) on the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB).
Reflecting on our history
We can trace Aviva’s history back over 300 years to 1696. Given our long heritage, it is likely that Aviva’s ancestor companies invested in, and insured, businesses involved in the slave trade. This is unacceptable now and should have been unacceptable then.
We should not deny or erase what happened in the past but we can and should apologise. We deplore any such connection, regret any association with an evil trade and are sorry for any involvement in the pain and suffering. We also can and must ensure it does not happen in the future.
Today, we have a commitment to prevent instances of modern slavery in our business and supply chain, and Aviva stands alongside those battling injustice and hate. Our ambition is to have a truly diverse and inclusive culture that enables everyone to be themselves and to thrive, no matter their background. As part of this, Aviva is supporting charities that support racial equality and diversity. Read our Modern Slavery Act statement (PDF 7.1MB) and human rights policy (PDF 2.8MB).