Ten years ago, Aviva was a sprawling group of insurance businesses, a legacy from its days of expansion through bolt-on acquisitions. In 2015, then chief executive Mark Wilson set up an umbrella group to cross-sell between the group’s life and general insurance product lines. His big idea was to harness technology to drive the business forward.
The new team was set up not in an office block, but in an old garage in London’s Hoxton Square, and so became known as the “technology garage”. It developed “MyAviva”, so that all of a customer’s policies could be viewed in one place. Analysing the data enabled finer pricing to reward customers for the breadth and depth of their Aviva relationship, out of which AvivaPlus emerged – a promise never to charge Aviva customers more for their policies than new customers. Another part of the technology garage was an innovation team, set up to identify emerging trends and launch new concepts.
This was a long-term strategy, the sort that investors support, but the short-term costs were high. Dramatic returns were promised, but after a while, shareholders began to have doubts. That’s the problem with jam tomorrow – unless investors can see tangible value emerging, they begin to wonder whether tomorrow will ever come. This must have produced some frank discussions in the boardroom. In October 2018, Wilson left rather quickly.