Shareholder update - June 2022

Every year we have a proportion of dividends that are unclaimed by shareholders and in fact they are actually shares on the register that nobody ever claims.

And what we do is we look at those unclaimed assets as they're called and if they're not claimed or recovered after 12 years, then we pass them to the Foundation so that they can be used for good causes, charitable causes and actually make a difference to the communities within which we work and operate.

I think it very much aligns with our ethos as an organisation in terms of being a sustainable organisation, of having a very strong focus on community, doing good, being sustainable, making a difference.

So we picked three areas broadly that we like to fund. There's climate action which is very topical and very much aligns with our wider net zero ambition.

We also focus on resilient communities and strengthening the resilience of communities again very much aligned to what we do in our general insurance business in terms of flood action and helping people recover from, you know, accidents and incidents that happen and then lastly financial inclusion and capability.

How do we drive financial inclusion and capability, give people the tools to use financial services to benefit them? And how do we help educate people about what's available there? And I think there is a big gap there.

So we really want to understand the impact and the outcomes of projects, and we measure that very carefully, to make sure that actually our money is counting and it is making a difference.

I mean, I'm really, really proud of it. We, we've given away just over £8 million which is, you know, quite a significant amount, and we've probably touched the lives or helped about 800,000 individuals.

My passion is really making us relevant today and the whole idea of financial inclusion, financial capability, people being able to use financial services to make their lives better and be able to do so is really, really important.

Talking money is a charity based in Bristol.

Essentially, we exist to relieve poverty, to combat financial exclusion and to promote access to justice for people experiencing financial problems.

So the Aviva Foundation has provided funding for us to work in partnership with another local advice agency, St. Paul's Advice Centre and Advice UK, national membership body for advice centres.

And they have supported us over the last few years to put direct resource to working with clients in a different way.

So it's starting to look at root cause, starting to look at systemic issues, taking the time to think about the work we're doing with people and produce the work with people.

So one of the biggest challenges for us now is that we are seeing people, for example, who are employed, but whose wages don't even cover their basic day to day living costs.

So we're seeing people with rent arrears, council tax arrears, gas and electric water debts, but with no real obvious solution in sight.

So the impact that we're having as a result of the funding is helping us to work with clients for longer so that we don't just solve their immediate crisis. We help them to find the solution and stick with them after that crisis is gone, so that they're not back to us with another crisis in a year's time.

We're dealing with the most marginalised in society, and those people can be stuck in poverty for significant chunks of their life and without kind of the interventions that we can do at potentially an earlier stage before people get into real financial hardship.