Welcome to our shareholder update.
In this edition of your shareholder update you can read about:
- Chairman’s update - AGM and recent market announcements.
- Caring for our communities - volunteering week.
- Caring for our employees - Aviva’s ‘Mid-life MOT’.
- Caring for our environment - solar carport in Norwich.
- Awards we’ve won recently.
Chairman’s update
Dear shareholder,
I’m pleased to introduce our quarterly shareholder update.
It was once again a pleasure to speak to shareholders at our Annual General Meeting on 23 May. I talked about what defines us as a business, what we achieved in the past year and where we plan to be in the year ahead.
As always, the Board and I found the opportunity to hear from shareholders directly to be immensely valuable.
It was Maurice Tulloch’s first AGM as our new CEO, and he spoke about his ambitions for Aviva to be a truly outstanding business that offers our customers the best possible experiences.
Subsequently, as part of our investor update on 6 June, Maurice outlined our plans to make Aviva a simpler, more competitive and more commercial organisation.
We recognise our business needs to be re-focused on the fundamentals to deliver the level of shareholder returns we all believe are possible.
This month we announced that our CFO, Tom Stoddard, will step down from the Board at the end of June. Jason Windsor, currently CFO of Aviva UK Insurance, will become interim CFO (subject to regulatory approval).
Finally, as I made clear at the AGM, all of us at Aviva are keenly aware of our responsibility to be good corporate citizens for the benefit of all our stakeholders, not just our shareholders.
Maurice talked about his own commitment to promoting diversity and to tackling climate change. We are proud of the work we do in our communities and in this update, you can read more about our recent volunteering week, our Mid-life MOT initiative and our solar panel carpark in Norwich.
Thank you for your continuing interest and support.
Sir Adrian Montague - Chairman
Volunteering week
We enthusiastically took part in National Volunteering Week, 3-7 June, across our UK sites. London, Norwich, Bristol, York, Dorking, Eastleigh, Perth, Glasgow.
Our colleagues can take 21 hours volunteering leave each year. During volunteering week, we encouraged people to volunteer in their local area, getting involved with projects and activities such as:
- Pure Clean Earth – plastic reduction by assisting with litter picking.
- This Is Progress - creating community a garden, landscaping, carpentry, painting, planting, weeding.
- Spitalfields Crypt Trust - supporting homeless people and gardening.
- The RSPCA - cleaning out kennels and general maintenance of building.
- Trees for Cities - tree maintenance work and clearing of a whole new allotment plot.
- Independent Age - telephone befriending for older people.
- The Hackney Pirates - literacy support group for children.
There has been a 95% increase in our people’s volunteering hours so far in 2019 compared to the whole of 2018. We hope the uptake in volunteering leave continues to increase. We plan to build on our existing connections with local communities and encourage our people to do the same.
Midlife MOTs
We’ve recently done a study on mid-life workers which revealed that:
· 37% of employees believe there is age discrimination in their workplace, while 19% of employers are concerned about it.
· 53% of 60+ are not ready to retire, increasing to 61% for those aged 65+.
· The majority (73%) of those in their 50s and 60s feel they share invaluable skills, experience and knowledge with colleagues – but 16% believe it is not valued by their employer.
· The UK’s workforce is getting older: a third of employees will be aged 50+ in the next decade.
Our findings highlight the need for companies to make sure employees in mid-life feel valued at work. To help our own people embrace fuller working lives, we have recently launched our ‘Mid-Life MOT’.
Following a successful pilot in 2018, the programme will help our people to consider aspects of their work, wealth and wellbeing from the age of 45. It will include:
- Face-to-face seminars across our UK offices, complemented by our MOT guide.
- Free online Aviva and government-backed resources.
- A free 30-minute consultation with a qualified financial adviser.
We aim to prompt our people to begin making plans to support the next phase of their work, wealth and wellbeing, as well as identify practical steps they can take to support a fuller, more rewarding working life.
Useful links for shareholders
Solar carport takes Norwich off grid
We’ve demonstrated our commitment to tackling climate change by building a solar carport at one of our core sites in Norwich.
During periods of good light, the carport will generate more than enough energy to power our ‘Horizon’ office, which accommodates around 1,000 people. Any excess power will be sold back to the national grid.
The specially-constructed solar panels cover 250 car park spaces and will generate 542,000 kWh each year. That’s enough to power 138 homes for a year or an electric car for 1.5 million miles (60 times around the world).
At peak generating capacity, we’ll use 91% of the generated ‘green’ energy. We’ve also made an active decision to use local suppliers for this development, employing Norwich-based firm RenEnergy for the construction of the carport. Watch more about this story in this video:
Transcript for video Bringing green energy to our Norwich office
On top of the car park at Horizon, we are building a solar array which will generate enough power to run the Aviva call centre.
In peak sun conditions, we will not only power the building but also export green energy to the national grid.
What happens is the energy hits the solar panels, that gets converted into direct current. It then goes through, a piece of technology called an inverter, which matches the building's demand in alternating current.
So all the power that's generated if the building needs it, will be used in the building first, then anything surplus, that power then goes back to the grid.
Over 1800 panels will cover the car parking spaces on an innovative steel structure, which is attached to steel ground anchors. This is a brilliant design as we have avoided the use of thousands of tonnes of concrete. We also have several EV charging points, so it would be good to see them being used when the sun is shining and charging vehicles.
The great thing is when you look at the size of this project here is that it's 610 kilowatts of solar PV that is enough to power 138 houses annually, and it's enough to drive an electric car 60 times around the world, equivalent to 1.5 million miles.
We will use up to 91% of the power generated, and this will provide up to 63% of our call centre annual electricity. The delivery of this project has a very low carbon footprint where most of the components and services have been sourced locally. Our project design and build supplier is based in Blofield Heath less than five miles away. The steel structure has been fabricated in Wymondham, 14 miles away. And we've got electrical services in Newmarket, making this a very local East Anglian project.
So it makes me incredibly proud to work for Aviva, putting such value in these initiatives. I just think it's absolutely fantastic. I come from a time when everything went in the black bin and here we are with renewable energy being used by a company as big as Aviva. I just hope that more follow suit.
At Horizon, this is our first carport solar project, and we have options to build larger systems in Perth and in Bristol, and I have found an ideal location in Ireland.
We have a great opportunity to prove this technology here in Norwich and export to our global locations.
Awards we’ve won recently
At the Claims Awards on 24 May 2019 we walked away with the most awards. We picked up Claims Product Solution of the Year and Direct and Commercial Lines Claims Excellence of the Year.
Reflecting on our double win, UK general insurance claims director Andrew Morrish said: “We regard the service we offer our customers and brokers when it comes to making a claim absolutely fundamental to our success.
“An efficient and simple service, that has empathy and is expert, means that customers can get the help they need during the most challenging times.
“I’m delighted our claims team has been recognised. But we don’t stand still and are focused on continuing to look at innovative ways to improve our claims service that responds to customers’ evolving needs.”
We also won two awards at the Professional Pensions ‘UK Pensions Awards 2019’ on 24 May 2019: Defined Contribution Pension Provider of the Year Winner and Pensions Communication Initiative of the Year Winner.
Stay in touch
We’ll share another shareholder update in September 2019. Register with Computershare to receive an alert when these updates are available.
If you have any feedback or suggestions for our shareholder update, please email aviva.shareholders@aviva.com.
