Aviva 2013 Annual Report Download - page 40

Aviva plc
Annual report and accounts 2013
38
Market focus continued
Greg Somerville
CEO, Aviva Canada
Business
in brief
We offer:
Personal home and
motor insurance,
general insurance
for businesses
2.6m1
Customers
3,600
Employees
Market type
Cash generator
Canada
For more information
about market priorities,
turn to page 20
Canada
We are the second largest general insurer in
Canada, providing personal and commercial
insurance products.
Our strategy
Our Canadian business is a cash generator with
a strong track record of delivering cash returns
to Group. This ability is founded on our absolute
commitment to customers and a strong
underwriting capability where our risk selection
and pricing have become a source of competitive
advantage. We have a focus on strengthening the
performance culture and employee engagement
across the business, whilst maintaining and
growing strong relationships with our
distribution partners.
We are entering into 2014 with good
momentum underpinned by our pricing,
underwriting and predictive analytics
sophistication.
In 2014, we aim to improve underwriting
prots and cash ow as we deliver the benets
of investments in automation. We are enhancing
our claims systems for personal lines to deliver a
better service for customers and this will also have
signicant cost benets. Commercial lines will
benet from signicant investments which will
deliver improved efciency combined with
greater risk selection and pricing sophistication.
Several opportunities for customer growth are
being pursued. In particular our growth strategy
focuses on western Canada where both the
economy and population are expected to grow
at rates above the Canadian average.
We continue to innovate and offer new products
to meet our customers’ needs. In 2014, we will
launch ‘Ovation’ nationwide, a product targeted
at higher net worth individuals, and ‘Green
Assure’, a new insurance enhancement that
enables customers to replace their damaged or
destroyed property with energy efcient and
environmentally-friendly alternatives.
We remain prepared to help our customers
when they need us most. The 2013 Calgary and
Toronto major weather events show us at our
best, working for our customers and partners
and highlighting the value of our service.
The Canadian insurance business, unlike
many other businesses in the Group, is mostly
intermediated. We sell our products through
a distribution network of 1,600 independent
broker partners.
We continue to work closely with our broker
partners to help them integrate digital technology
and faster quoting tools into their businesses.
This will help enable them to address increasing
customer demand for choice, simplicity and
self-service.
To maintain our competitive advantage in
underwriting we continue to enhance our talent
programme to ensure we have the best people
in place at all levels of the organisation.
We are also continuing to develop our
world-class predictive analytics capabilities.
Signicant opportunities to improve underwriting
results exist, for example by combating
fraudulent claims. Fraud costs all customers and
our shareholders. We are deploying sophisticated
predictive tools that review claims and activity
across all elements of the claims process. The
potential for improved claims management and
service delivery is signicant and we intend to
embed further these capabilities into our
underwriting processes.
1 This represents unique customers and not the number of people who are covered by our policies, which is considerably more.