Aviva will prioritise “efficiency, experience and growth” in its platform arm next year.
Al Ward, its head of the adviser platform business, spoke to Money Marketing about the firm’s goals for 2024.
Ward said that the right combination of efficiency and experience are critical to get growth.
On the Consumer Duty, Ward said that Aviva is always trying to drive value by keeping charges “small and clear”.
Ward also shared his views on the challenging economic times the UK finds itself in.
“The good thing about a challenging market is you have to got to be on top of your game,” he said.
Ward added that some advisers have told him they have clients on too many different platforms, sometimes as high as 19 “which can be a minefield”.
He likened this to a person running 19 separate bank accounts at numerous banks at the same time.
Aviva has done a lot of work with advisers around costs analysis “to make client engagement easier”.
Still, Aviva wants to “iron out all the issues or adviser problems”.
Ward explained that there is a lot of talk about integration, but when he speaks to advisers, they do not ask for Aviva to integrate more but rather ask “can you make integration easier”.
The insurance giant has also added an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) profiling tool on the Aviva platform.
This offers an independently verifiable assessment of a client’s holdings and uses the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Ward said: “No-one else has got this in the market” and Aviva has worked with ESG Accord to help launch the ESG profiling tool.
“This can be a really powerful tool for advisers”, Ward said, as advisers can see if a portfolio is performing well and how ESG it is aligned.
On the 16 August, Aviva chief executive of UK and Ireland Doug Brown told Money Marketing around 90% of Aviva’s advice platform is automated.
He said Aviva continues to invest in automation as it “wants to make it easier for advisers and customers to deal with Aviva”.
Regardless of macroeconomic headwinds, Aviva remains “committed to the advice market”, Brown added.
