Insurer Aviva has fintech growth in sights

Insurer Aviva is eyeing acquisitions in artificial intelligence and big data as it looks to transform itself into a fintech business.

Mark Wilson, chief executive, said at the company’s self-styled “digital garage” hub in east London’s trendy Hoxton Square that the group’s healthy balance sheet would enable it to expand its innovation projects.

He said Aviva, which employs 2,500 in Perth and Bishopriggs, had been called up by major technology businesses, and recently sealed a lucrative deal with Tencent, a $300 billion Chinese tech firm.

Wilson said: “I don’t mean billions, but we will do acquisitions if we find the right things, maybe in big data, maybe in platforms.

“There is nothing imminent, but we can do this because we have built a pretty good balance sheet, which we can now use.”

Aviva launched the “digital garage”, a technology hub for product development, in 2015 after ploughing millions of pounds into an innovation strategy that failed. It led to the creation of Ask It Never, a feature which allows customers to buy insurance without filling in endless forms, and the Myaviva app, which puts customer policies in one place online.

Wilson added: “We do want to change Aviva into being a fintech. It’s quite weird because we have been getting all these inbound calls from the big names in Silicon Valley.

“I had a call from the CEO of one of the big ones last week, he called me up and I said ‘why?’ and he said because ‘no one else is doing it.’” 0 Aviva chief executive Mark Wilson