Aviva plans to have 10% of staff in physical offices come September

Aviva chief executive Amanda Blanc confirmed that she expects a 10% capacity of the insurer’s staff to return to its office sites in September as part of its return to work plan.

In a media call this morning, Blanc said: “We are currently looking at our return to work plan. Primarily, for us the importance is around the safety and wellbeing of our people. We’re thinking about how we can start to bring people back to work safely across our various sites.

“We believe we’ll have about 10% capacity in September and we’ll build it up from there. But we have to recognise that primarily, this is about the physical safety and wellbeing of our people and then obviously we will then be looking at what does this mean for us as we go forward? Are there better ways of working? All I think in the planning, but nothing specific to announce today.”

Blanc added that she was “pleasantly surprised” at the success of remote working, initially introduced for all businesses in March to adhere to the UK’s guidance around mitigating the spread of Covid-19.

She said: “What we’ve learned over the last six months is that there are a lot more flexible ways of working and that actually you can be quite successful working in a different environment, doing things in a different way.”

Blanc was speaking following the publication of Aviva’s H1 financial results, released today.

On these, Blanc said: “We are reporting solid half year numbers. Our capital surplus of £12bn is strong. Our operating profit of £1.2bn is robust. The impact of Covid on general insurance claims, net of reinsurance, was £165m, in line with the number we gave at our Q1 update in May.”