Aviva 2009 Annual Report Download - page 74

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Aviva plc Corporate responsibility continued
Annual Report and Accounts 2009
to learn more about how customers interact with Aviva
and gain a better understanding of their preferences. NPS
performance targets form part of our executive directors’
annual remuneration.
Products and services
Through our product portfolio customers can make informed
choices about their insurance and financial needs that can at
the same time provide wider socioeconomic and environmental
benefits:
— Our affordable microfinance and insurance products for low-
income earners have reached around 1.4 million rural lives in
India to date, in many cases offering financial protection for
as little as two dollars a year.
— Car insurance customers in some of our general insurance
markets can opt for lower premiums if they drive vehicles
with low CO2 emissions.
— With research showing that half of new parents do not have
adequate insurance, we launched Parent Life Cover in the UK
which includes free protection until the child’s first birthday.
— Recognising low levels of confidence among consumers,
Lisseo was launched in France to offer customers the
opportunity to invest gradually in the equity markets without
the need to commit a lump sum on one day.
Extreme weather events are an increasingly common occurrence
and 2009 was no exception. Aviva in Ireland launched an
advance payment mechanism in response to the extensive
flooding in November to help householders and businesses
who were most seriously affected. In a co-ordinated campaign,
the team also worked with local and national media and local
councillors to keep customers informed about the steps to
take if they were affected.
In the UK, by activating our major incident plan in a timely
manner ahead of predicted floods and storms at the year end,
we were well prepared to respond. In Cockermouth, Cumbria,
particularly hard hit by severe flooding, Aviva claims staff were
immediately stationed at the evacuation centre and stayed until
the last evacuee had left, providing advice and support to
anyone who needed it, irrespective of who their insurer was.
Our drive to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
gained extra momentum this year with the launch of the first
Aviva Customer Cup. This is our new global tournament
designed to help our employees identify and remove barriers to
customer loyalty, stimulate innovative ideas and enable teams
around the world to be recognised for delivering the ‘One
Aviva’ brand promise. Projects from more than 340 teams were
evaluated by judges in three tournament stages with 10 teams
making it through to the grand final in October. The winning
group was the ‘Ears of RAC’ with a web-based project to
capture comments and opinions from customers, spot trends
and respond to them quickly. The focus is now on sharing the
best practices of the top 10 projects in other parts of Aviva’s
business and embedding these before launching the next
tournament in 2010.
Supply chain
Our challenge is to support our suppliers in meeting the highest
social, environmental and ethical standards in the delivery of
goods and services. For 2009 we agreed a global approach and
targets for our regional procurement teams focusing on our
approach to:
— Sourcing ethical suppliers in the context of Aviva’s annual
third-party spend of around £6 billion
— Ensuring an ethical relationship between our suppliers and
Aviva employees
— Encouraging our suppliers to further develop CR within their
own businesses and supply chains.
We made progress in sourcing with the development of a set of
industry-leading questions in collaboration with the UK-based
Financial Services CR forum. These take account of CR issues for
different categories of spend, helping Aviva to make informed
choices about potential new suppliers. A CR weighting is
included in our sourcing decisions.
To support and maintain ethical relationships with suppliers
we are implementing processes and tools that identify
hospitality offered by suppliers to ensure that this does not
conflict with our internal rules and is not offered during
commercial negotiations. Similarly, we have implemented a
register of interests to ensure complete transparency of any
interest that our employees might have in an existing supplier.
Finally, in relation to encouraging our suppliers to adopt
sustainable practices, we are reviewing Aviva's suppliers to
assess them against a ‘CR maturity curve’ and develop relevant
improvement plans. Aviva's suppliers are asked to sign our code
of conduct, which provides an obligation to comply with
relevant standards relating to the environment, ethical business
conduct and respect for human rights. All regions are making
good progress in embedding these activities into business
processes, but we acknowledge that this needs to remain
a focus area in 2010.
External benchmarking and recognition
Our achievements in 2009 were recognised by our inclusion
in some of the world’s leading external benchmarks:
— Dow Jones Sustainability World and STOXX Indices
— SAM sustainability year book
— FTSE4GOOD Index Series
— FTSE KLD Europe, Asia Pacific and Global Sustainability
indices (excluding the US Index)
— ECPI Ethical Index Euro and Ethical Index Global indices
— Building Public Trust award for clear and transparent
reporting of our executive remuneration policy
— Gold status in Business in the Community’s (BITC) Corporate
Responsibility Index (2008) and Most Improved Company in
our sector
— Carbon Disclosure Project Leadership Index – score of 80 out
of 100
— Carbon Trust Standard – first insurer to receive the standard
for our year-on-year efforts to reduce our carbon footprint
— Stonewall Workplace Equality Index – ranked 54th in the top
100 employers in the UK
— Ranked in The Times/Aurora top 50 companies – Where
Women Want to Work.
Affiliations and engagements
We work closely with leading organisations to share good
practice, identify emerging issues and improve our performance.
Here are just a few of the organisations we collaborated with
in 2009:
— CBI Climate Change Board
— HRH Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability
— ClimateWise
— UNEP Finance Initiative
— UN Global Compact (UNGC) and represented on UN
Principles for Responsible Investment and Caring for Climate
working groups
— Business in the Community