18-09-2020
Aviva to cut 60 advisers in strategy overhaul
Insurance AlertssAviva to cut 60 advisers in strategy overhaul
Aviva Financial Advice is axing around 60 adviser roles in a strategic overhaul of the unit, Money Marketing can reveal.
The cuts represent a two-thirds reduction in the number of advisers employed by the insurance giant, whose current roster stands at some 100 planners. Overall, the business will be losing 79 roles, with the number of managers falling by 16, and a small number of support roles also scrapped.
Those whose roles were at risk were notified this morning, Money Marketing understands. The move comes as Aviva is overhauling its advice strategy to widen its offering away from traditional retirement advice to meet a wider set of customer needs.
The firm will look to refocus away from pensions and annuities to create a service that looks at the whole of an individual’s wealth. While a core focus of Aviva Financial Advice will continue to be at-retirement planning, the firm is looking to launch an abridged, low-cost lighter, touch advice service by end of the year.
Further expansions in the pipeline will attempt to cater for needs across different life stages, the firm says. Aviva UK savings and retirement chief executive Lindsey Rix tells Money Marketing that while the firm was proud of its satisfaction scores in the four years since launching the advice arm, it had taken a “long hard look at itself” in the run up to changing direction.
“It’s clear that the need for advice continues to be strong,” Rix says. “As an industry we need to find a way to plug the advice gap. “But we’ve learnt over four years that the proposition has been too narrow…We’ve not able to meet a wide enough need of customer needs.” However, this broadening is unlikely to mean that Aviva will move away from its current advice strategy where recommendations are tied to the provider’s own products.
“We do still think that Aviva products are still the right products, but we are looking at how we can broaden to be a sustainable business model, to make sure we service the right number of customers with the right proposition,” Rix says. She adds that advice continues to be of strategic importance to the firm, but that a refocus would make the planning arm more competitive and sustainable in the long-term.
“This isn’t signalling us pulling back on advice but we do need to introduce new capability,” she says. “The role reductions are the first step in realigning the direction of travel…we believe reset makes us commercially viable for the future.”
One of the areas of focus will be looking right at the beginning of a customer journey, to decide whether or not a client needs full advice, so Aviva will be looking to boost areas like paraplanning, support services and triage. “We’ll look at understanding different levels of support from information gathering, through to full advice,” Rix says, adding that Aviva will be looking to redeploy some of the staff let go to work on that element of the service, and will look to grow capability back up again in the future.
Customers can also expect more digital advice services from the firm in the future. “This is not related to Covid-19, this is adjusting strategy and how we think we can support our customers best,” Rix says. “Covid has accelerated digitisation, and in all likelihood we will be living with these measures for time to come.
“Advice isn’t going to be 100 per cent face to face in the future…Expect that to have a more prominent role in our offering going forwards.” Money Marketing first revealed Aviva Financial Advice was the subject of a strategic review back in July. At its half-year results the following month, the firm did not reference the unit, arguing that it made more sense to discuss its wider savings and retirement proposition in the round.
The insurer did have a 120-strong direct advice arm before the RDR, but axed the service in the wake of the flagship reform. When it restarted the service with 12 advisers in November 2016, it was limited to post-retirement clients. Figures gathered by Money Marketing suggest that growth in headcount had stalled around 100 adviseres since 2018, despite perks like company cars being offered, and no new vacancies were being posted.
The wider Aviva group is currently on a cost-cutting drive, with some 1,800 ‘role reductions’ slated to take place.
Source: Money Marketing
