In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Aviva CEO: Transforming Insurance, Navigating Climate Risk and Leading with Purpose

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

In this episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen sits down with Dame Amanda Blanc, CEO of Aviva, Britain's largest insurer, to unpack a remarkable corporate turnaround. Since becoming CEO during the pandemic, Amanda has refocused Aviva's portfolio, sold off non-core businesses, and made the landmark acquisition of Direct Line. She explains how AI is reshaping insurance, why climate change is a defining challenge for the industry, and what it takes to restore investor confidence after years of challenges. Beyond business, Amanda shares her views on leadership, execution, and building resilience, as well as her advocacy for gender balance in finance. From growing up in the Rhondda Valley of South Wales to being appointed a Dame and leading Britain's largest insurer, her story is one of decisive leadership and determination. Tune in for an insightful conversation! In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.  The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Une Solheim. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, everybody. I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Soan Wealth Fund. And today, we are in really good company with Amanda Blanc, the CEO of Britain's leading insurance company, Aviva. Now, this is the kind of company that insures your home, your car, and helps you save for retirement. They serve 25 million people globally and 21 million people in the UK alone. Amanda took over in July 2020 and has led what is described as an complete transformation and we're going to hear all about it. So Amanda, wonderful to have you on the podcast. Now, thanks, Nikolai. It's really, really great to see you. Just briefly before we start, what does Aviva actually do in short? Oh, right, in short.

Well, I mean, basically it protects people, it protects businesses from bad things. that can happen. And also it looks after people in their hour of need and when they want to do things like retire. So, you know, we say with you today for a better tomorrow, that's our purpose. And I suppose that encapsulates everything that we do. Now, you're both an insurer and a major investor. How could you explain that dual role? Yeah. So obviously, as an insurer, we have a big balance sheet, so over 400 billion pounds. And so we need to put those assets to really, really good use. And we do that by investing. We're a big investor in the UK. So, you know, we're a big believer in the UK. So we invest in UK infrastructure and UK guilt. I mean, also in private

assets. But we also invest in corporate debt and in other things. So I think it's about getting the best return over a very long period for our shareholders and obviously also for our customers. When you compare Aviva with other insurance companies, what is it that make you special? Well, I think for us, what makes us special. Apart apart, of course, from having a wonderful CEO. Oh, no, no, no, no. But I mean, I think it is about the people that work for Aviva. They make a really big difference.

If you think about an insurance company, it doesn't really sell anything tangible, like a handbag or a pair of shoes. It basically sells a promise to pay. And so I think, you know, that makes us special. But really, if you think about what's our USP, it is being diversified. We will basically take you from your junior savings. account, your junior ICER, at a very young age, to your equity release mortgage when you're thinking about your later stages of your life and everything in between. And there are very, very

few. There are no insurers in the UK that do that. And there are very few insurers now across the world that do that. Now, you and I, we've been in the jobs for pretty much exactly the same time, five years. Now, you've totally transformed Aviva. What are the key decisions that you have made? So I think the key decisions came with actually within the first month. So I was in a fortunate position of being on the board for six months before I became the CEO. And really the big decision was around focus in the portfolio. If I looked at Aviva and, you know, we had positions all across the world, but we didn't have scale positions. And coming from the background of working at ACSA for much of my career working with Henri de Kast, you know, one of his big mantras was you need to be top three in the market that you're in in order to be able to influence and to get the benefits of scale. in that market. So we took decisions very early on about focusing the portfolio. We sold eight businesses for $8 billion within the first sort of 12 to 24 months. And by doing that, we were able to meet our second objective, which is about de-levering the organisation, also returning some money to shareholders. And actually what was good was by selling off those businesses where we

didn't have scale positions, we basically showed the strength of the core business in the UK, island and Canada, and all the real benefits of being scale players in our market really started to shine through. Amanda, it's quite a luxury to be on the board six months before you take over as CEO. So were you sitting there with a piece of paper? It's just like, I'm going to change this. I'm going to change that. No, I mean, no, it wasn't like, it wasn't like that at all. So I started in the December 2019 and obviously then we went straight into COVID and the, you know, we appointed a new chair and then, you know, the CEO stepped down. And so there was a real opportunity.

And of course, as you're sitting on the board, you, and as I'd been an executive for a long time before that, you're always looking at it with an angle of, you know, what would I do? What could I do differently? And, you know, I really felt that by making some real decisive decisions around the portfolio, that to me was obvious. You know, everything in my DNA was telling me that that was the right thing to do. And then you saw the sort of, you know, 20 million customers, or I probably wasn't as many at that point,

the real opportunity to sort of connect all of the benefits through the customer proposition. And I felt that that was something really compelling. But yet it was, it's always very frustrating, isn't it? When you haven't got your hands on something, you want to sort of be able to do it. What was the biggest challenge in this transformation? So, I mean, COVID was a big challenge,

because obviously, you know, effectively I was running the operation where there were a few of us in our old building in St. Helens in the city. basically, you know, making decisions and using teams calls and everything else. So that was a blessing under curse. I mean, it was difficult in that I like to be out in the business. You like to see what's going on. But at the same time, it also meant you could really focus your attention. You could really get things done.

So I think that was a challenge. And then, of course, there's the culture of the organisation. You know, people were used to, it was quite slow in terms of this decision making. So, you know, there was sort of, you know, increasing the pace. And then, look, I think, thirdly, being absolutely honest. And by the way, thank you for being a shareholder in Aviva. You know, it was the investor confidence. You know, when I was speaking to investors, they were basically saying, really, you know,

Aviva's been a big disappointment. We've sort of had three dividend cuts between 2010 and 2020. Why would we invest? You know, what's different? And so it was really, you know, making sure that we were able to tell that equity story. You know, I somehow think it was easier to make change during COVID than, if COVID hadn't been there because, you know, people were not in the office all the time. They couldn't talk to all their colleagues all the time.

And so in terms of corporate culture, I probably think it was a bit easier to change. Well, I mean, I don't think that's untrue. I think that the problem was if you like to physically sort of sit with people and listen to them and understand what's going on, which I do, I had to find new ways of doing that. So, you know, jumping into teams calls, doing sort of virtual town halls, getting a sense of the organization, that way, in a way you had to trust the different instinct. So I do genuinely think that in terms of decision-making, COVID was definitely beneficial because you could really just crack through things, particularly if you think about selling businesses. You know, previously, you'd have had to

jump on planes, go and meet people. Whereas in this instance, you were basically having team meetings, moving on, getting documents agreed, getting decisions taken. That was definitely easier. Talking about decisions, you bought Direct Line for 3.7 billion pounds. Why was that important for you to do? Yeah, so I think when we looked at our position in the UK, we had scale positions across most of our product lines. But we looked at the opportunity as a customer-focused business in the retail, home and motor book.

And we really thought, actually, when we looked at Direct Line, genuinely we felt that we could run that business better because we had scale, because we had the ability to invest in technology, because we had the ability to use digital and, you know, the AI transformation that we'd already undertaken, we could reuse that. We felt that we actually could deliver a better return for shareholders by running that business ourselves. And so, you know, as you would expect, we did look at a number of other alternatives at the

time, but the actual benefits of the expense synergies, the capital synergies, and the customer benefits, they sort of all came together and it became an open. brainer, really. And so, yeah, last November, December, we made the bid and we completed the deal in the 1st of July this year. Some insurance companies focus in on one product line, whilst you cover the whole spectrum, what are the advantages of doing that? So I think in 2020, a lot of people said to me, you know, monoline businesses are the way forward, you know, effectively Aviva is trying to do too much, diversified businesses, you know, they don't work anymore. I felt very different from that. For one thing, having all of the customer data and having the customer through

their life cycle felt to me important. But genuinely, the diversification benefits for capital are significant when you have various lines of business. And I think what we have seen over the last five years is diversified businesses have actually done better. And if we think about investment, so if we think about the investment that will come with generative AI, you know, being able to spread that across 20 product lines and not just have to invest it in one or two, two definitely makes a big difference. So, you know, I think that people think very differently today about diversified businesses than they did maybe five years ago. No, you have experiences from other insurance companies too, right? You've been at Zurich and AXA before Aviva. What have

you taken from those companies into Aviva? So I think, I mean, you definitely take something from every organization that you work in. I mean, actually, Aviva is quite an emotional one for me because I actually started in Commercial Union, which was a founding company of Aviva. So, you know, In many respects, I rendered it up in the same company as I started with. But I work for most of my career, if we come to in year terms, with ACSA, you know, for two different periods. And I learned a huge amount from that, you know, the benefit of running a global business, a diversified business. And I think the opportunity to work with, I think, one of the best leaders, which was Henri de Cash. I mean, he certainly was, he transformed ACSA.

You know, he made that into a really huge company. and then Thomas has obviously taken it from strength to strength. But I think the ability to work with great leaders to understand, you know, what they do that makes an organisation great. I think that that was really important to me. Do insurance companies attract a certain type of people? I don't know. I mean, how should I put it?

Well, just put it the way you want to put it. Yeah, I mean, people who study actuarial sciences. I'm not like, what should we say, you know, rock and roll-and-roll type people, are they? Well, I mean, I look, so what should I say to that? Well, first of all, I'm a history graduate. I know. So, you know, I mean, so I think I sort of break the mold of that. And if I look around my ex-co, we've got all sorts of different people with different degrees, different talent.

I actually think that people do not understand what an insurance company does. You know, we started off by talking about it. But in essence, you can be in marketing. you can be an actuary, you can be an accountant, you can be in sales, you can be in underwriting, you can be in claims, you can be in supply chain. You know, literally an insurance company does everything. And so when I'm out talking to school kids about insurance, you know, I try to say it's not about the motor insurance adverts that you see on TV. There's a huge amount more to it than that. And when I look at the people at Aviva, you know, they come from all different

backgrounds, different social mobility. But people are really excited about insurance today, Niklai. I think because if you think about the world that we're operating in digital and data, I mean, insurers have more data, probably the most other organizations in the world. If we think about, you know, somebody's pension, somebody's home insurance, somebody's car insurance, and then connecting all of that data together, we're able to attract really talented data scientists and then really talented digital people who can sort of put that together in propositions for customers. But do you think people in Aviva are more like people at Zurich and AXA than they are compared to people in, let's say, GSK, DiRgio BP?

I don't know. I mean, look, I think definitely insurance is a different business. I think you're not selling an actual physical product. So you're not manufacturing. anything in essence. So I think you do attract, you know, there is more, I guess, you see you've got a lot more intellectual power in that, you know, you've got a lot of people that really need to think deeply. But we've also got a lot of people here who really care passionately about customers. And I think that's no different to people in GSK and BP and all of those other companies. Definitely the things we do are different. But actually underneath it, people are genuinely the same, aren't they? You know, they come into work. They want to do a great job

for their customers, for the organisation that they work in. And actually, sometimes I think we can sort of label people that they are this type of person or this type of person. But actually, they're really not underneath it. They really just want to do a good job. Yeah. No, I share that positive attitude. What are the most important regulatory pressures you are facing?

What kind of regulatory pressures are irritating you a bit? Ah, so I mean, it's really interesting because obviously, having gone through the direct line deal, this year, we've actually had huge support from all of the regulatory authorities. I mean, I know that you don't hear CEOs saying that very often. But if we think about the PRA, the FCA, the CMA, you know, to be able to get those three approvals within six months, you know, that was really quite an achievement. And I think it showed some of the regulatory, you know, power coming through or some of the

changes in the regulatory attitude coming through. But look, you know, if I think about the last number of years, we've had big changes in terms of our solvency UK rules. You know, this was the post-Brexit. Eventually, we get to what the new solvency rules are. I think those have been positive for insurance companies. From an FCA perspective, the sort of conduct regulator, I think we have had some challenges. You know, we've had challenges around the implementation of new consumer duty.

It's been, I think, a lot more expensive than everybody thought it was going to be. It's been a lot more bureaucratic than everybody thought it was going to be. But I think we're through the end of that now. But I do think that we've definitely seen a change in attitude from the regulator. Some of the most recent, you know, announcements around encouraging people to take advice because only 9% of people in the UK actually take advice when it comes to their sort of retirement. You know, the regulator realizes that maybe some of the previous things that they had done had stopped people from taking advice.

We've now got more rules being consulted on that will help with that. Look, I'm an optimist. And I feel that some of these changes are going to make a positive difference for customers and a positive difference for, you know, the way that we operate the business. How do you read the health of the UK consumer now? Look, I think the health of the UK consumer, if I think about our experience, you know, so we have a, we have the biggest wealth platform over £200 billion of assets. So we're a big workplace pension provider and a big, you know, people save onto the advisor platform.

I think for our customers, we have seen really good resilience. I mean, there is also, obviously, the benefit that insurance is the last thing that people will sort of drop if they're in a sort of in a challenged environment. But we are not taking calls into the contact centre for people saying we can't afford our insurance, can you help us? We were during periods of COVID seeing some of that, but we're not seeing that today. But I think that, I think in essence, though, what, you know, if we think about our us as, you know, we are mass market. You still have this issue in the UK that there are lots of

people that, you know, don't own cars, that are in a desperate, desperate situation. And we see that through the work that we do in our social action. So the work that we do with the Citizens Advice Bureau, the work that we do with Money Advice Service, there what we see is that people who don't save, you know, who don't have money to save, and those people who don't save into a pension, they are struggling. But they have always been struggling. And I think, you know, what we're trying to do there is to really help them to think about how they can manage their lives better. How do you get people to save them all for retirement? Well, I think there's a number of things. I think first of all, understanding in schools, people need to understand that.

You know, today, if you are going to retire, you're not going to have a defined benefit pension. You're only going to have a defined contribution pension. And in the UK, 15 million people will not be able to retire well. So I think getting that education, it needs to start young. and then I think it needs to carry on through their working life. I think the government can help with that, Nicolai. If I think about, you know, things like auto-enrollment age, bring the age down from 22 to 18, where you start saving

and increase the contribution from what it is today at 8% to 12%. These are things that we know will make a difference. So I think it's a combination of taking individual responsibility. Employers can help with education. Definitely, you know, the government can help with policy. So I think it's a combination of all of those things. And then I think encouraging investors to think about not just sort of taking the default pension fund and just investing in the safest assets, but thinking about investing in things like private assets

that over the longer term will give a better return. Moving on to some of the changes we're seeing just now, how is AI changing the insurance business? Oh my gosh, massively. I mean, if I think about Arriva, You know, we've got about 150 use cases on AI. I mean, look, we are very big users of AI. So if we think about our motor pricing, we've been using AI for over 10 years, machine learning. And like 98% of our retail products are priced using AI.

So for instance, if I'm 18 years old and I'll buy a new Ferrari, I pay a high price, right? Yeah, I mean, you probably would struggle to ensure that, look like that. I think an 18-year-old driving a Ferrari. I mean, is that really responsible? I don't know, you know. But, yeah, I mean, we've been using all of data and machinery for a very, very long time. If you think about how competitive and dynamic the UK market is, everybody's sort of constantly using different models to get to your best pricing point.

But if I think about some of the more exciting things, you know, in our claims world, for example, previously a customer would have been on calling us to check where a claim is in the process. They'd have got through to a handler. A handler would have taken digital. from them, looked through all the screens of all the different systems. Today, we've basically used AI models to predict the likely reason why the customer is calling so that when the customer gets through on the call, they're basically speaking to a handler who can say, I can see where you are in the claims process, you know, they've done all the

fraud checks using AI models and they can basically help the customer with the claim rather than spending the first five, ten minutes of the call taking all of the details. So I think that that use case can apply to very many products. And so that combination, I think insurance is perfectly set to take real advantage of AI. How is climate changing the insurance business? Well, I mean, look, I think David Attenborough has recently said something that the climate is sending out distress signals to the world. And if we think about our business in Canada last year, we had, you know, six cat events within about four weeks. Ket event being a catastrophe event. Sorry, being a catastrophe event, sorry, talking in my insurance

jargon. Good that you knew, fantastic. So essentially you had wildfires, you had hailstorms, you had flooding, all within, you know, the period of four weeks. So that obviously affects insurers because we have to price for that and we have to be able to model that. We have to manage our exposures and we have to really think about the zones in which we can underwrite and the capacity to which we can underwrite. So effectively, it matters a lot to us. Climate is really, really important to us. And, you know, mitigating some of that climate change is really part of what we do. And then if we think of us as an investor, we have, you know, climate tech funds in our Aviva investors business. That's about offering, I guess, investment to those companies. We're trying to

help with mitigating that. So climate tech investments. So I think it matters a lot. Yet politicians in part of the world don't think it's happening. No, no, I appreciate that. And I appreciate also that, you know, maybe the transition is going to happen in a different way than perhaps we anticipated it would in 2019, 2020, when I think everybody was incredibly gung-ho, you know, people were not driving, people were not flying because of COVID. And therefore, everybody thought the transition was going to be extremely quick, right? I think now we have a different view.

We have much more focus on energy security. But irrespective, the transition will happen at some point. I think the question is just when. And the question is ensuring that, you know, companies, countries, businesses, people do start thinking about how they can mitigate some of the impacts of climate change on them. I don't think that changes. What are the type of risks you will no longer insure? Because of the climate. Well, I think to some extent the UK has struggled with flooding.

So, for example, if we think about flooding, and this was a 10, 15 year ago issue in the UK, lots and lots of flooding events, and people were finding that they could not get insurance. And that is because houses were being built on floodplains or being built in areas where biodiversity had been sort of, you know, trees had been taken away, so rivers were flooding. So I think flooding is some of the areas where we struggle in certain areas because of the almost inevitability of flooding happening to be able to insure that. And, you know, so in the UK, we have a scheme called floodry, which is a sort of insurer government-backed scheme to provide insurance for those areas.

But not interestingly for houses built after, I can't remember the exact date, but I think it's 2001, because then at that point it was known. So I think those are the areas where you have to really think about that. And then you have to obviously manage your exposure in other areas to say, you know, for some risks, you know, we're not going to insure the first. 100,000 if you think it's a business or something like in certain areas so that customers take some of that risk themselves. You know, I use always a great example that when I was working at ACSA, there were quite a lot of flooding events in the Cambria area. We had a lot of

customers there. And people would rebuild their houses and they'd be rebuilding it, you know, their kitchens for the third time. But they'd still be putting in the wrong flooring. They'd still be putting in wooden kitchen units. And they'd still be building. And they'd still be putting plug points down on the floor. And, you know, you'd say you have to rebuild better and so that you can recover more quickly. And so I think encouraging that is also really important. Moving on to leadership. What is good leadership to you? Well, first of all, I think listening as much as talking, being able to communicate really well, quick and decisive decision making, but really importantly, good follow through on that decision making.

And what's the best way to follow through? Because you have been, some people call you the execution queen. What is good follow-up and good execution imply? How do you get there? So many times you see, I don't know about you, you must see it all the time, you hear leadership presentations and you hear strategies and people say, I've got this great strategy. And you look at the slides and you think, oh, yeah, that sounds really, really good. And then, you know, you sort of look back five years later and go, I wonder what happened with that, you know. And I think strategy is great. Execution is better. So, you know, I think you can, if you execute well on a sort of 80% their strategy, you would probably do better than you have 100% brilliant strategy and don't

follow through on the execution. What does it mean? It means, you know, having very clear objectives for absolutely everybody in the business, from me to the, you know, to every single person in the contact centre so that there's a real flow through. Just can everybody connect with what the principle and focus objectives of the business are? Regular monitoring of the performance. So, you know, with my CFO, Charlotte Jones, I mean, she's phenomenal. You know, we have great performance management meetings with the business, regular reviews. Are you doing what you said you were going to do? If not, why? What has changed? What do we need to do differently to get to a better outcome? I think that constant review, really caring. So I talk to you about customer,

we say the customers are at heart of the business. Are all the actions therefore in the business around the customer? We start every exco with a complaint or a compliment from customers. We do customer closeness sessions, listening to our customers at an Exco level, at a board level. So I think it's just making sure that your actions match your words. I mean, it doesn't sound that difficult. And yet I see so many organizations that don't do that. How do you motivate people? Well, I think success is a big motivator, you know, showing them that in small bits. So at the beginning, the motivation at Aviva was basically giving them the confidence that I believed that we could do this.

And then by starting to do some of the actions to show that actually I was serious about this, that's very motivating for people. If they see that they're working for an organisation that is doing what it said, it's going to do, that's highly motivating. People care about customers, really focusing on that. People care about leadership, their own development,

their own careers. Are we focused on those things? Are we taking them seriously? And then really empathising, understanding the issues that they're dealing with. If we think of, you know, the contact centres, you'd often go to the contact centers and you'd sit with people and they'd say, you know, I'm trying to phone this number, connect this call. Nobody answers. Nobody listens. Actually taking that problem away and solving it. I think that's really, really motivating for people. They think, oh, right, okay, we've got leaders who are going to do what they say. That's great. I like that. You had your first leadership position when you were 29. now you are more than 29 now not much how has your leadership style changed

with age? I use the expression every day is a school day and I think your leadership style does change I mean there are things that are the same that ability to communicate that desire to communicate to simplify the story I think that is the same but you learn so much, you know, you learn so much about, for example, you know, the way you

connect your teams, you know, I think at the age of 29, you might take a little longer to make a people decision, even though you sort of know the right decision to make, but you might take a little bit longer. Today, I think you have to, you trust your judgment a lot more quickly. You've seen the movie run before and you're like, yeah, I've seen this movie run. This movie doesn't end well. Let's make a decision, you know, early on. I think those are the things you learn. And I think also that ability to just step back, you know, and trust the team around you. You are much, I'm much more empowering today than I would have been then. You know, I think you can identify brilliant people. You want brilliant people

working for you. You're not in any way threatened by that and you just let them get on with it. I think that's, that's different to when you were 29, you probably would have you thought about it a little bit differently then. You're also known for your kind of direct. communication style. Now, it's not something we normally think of when we think about, you know, the UK where people are incredibly polite and nice, right? So how do you communicate in a direct manner in a society where it's not very common? But I think you can be, I think you can be nice and be direct. So, you know, I don't believe in being horrible. I mean, I just don't think you get anywhere by being nasty or horrible. Effectively, when I give feedback or when we are talking

about things here, I always say, you know, we have to be honest, but we have to do it in a nice way. So be polite, do it nicely, but be honest. There's no point in pretending that something isn't an issue if it is an issue. So I genuinely feel that, you know, when I have one-to-ones with my team every month and they have one-to-ones with their team. And we are constantly saying, okay, what did we do well? And what could we do better? And I think in, In framing the conversation like that, you know, you always know there's going to be, you know, something good, but also something where we can work on our development for the future. So I think you can do it in a nice way. You can do it with a smile on your face. You can, but you, but you do, honestly, like if you're running around the houses, trying to get a message through, it takes an awful long time.

It's very exhausting and people don't understand. And so they definitely appreciate you being more direct. Some personal reflections. You are one of the CEOs who are the most vocal about gender balance. Why is that important for you? Well, I mean, so first of all, I would say I was asked by the government to be the women in finance champion in 2020. And we are part of that moving in nowhere, by the way. You are? Now, as far as the women in finance was concerned, what was clear was,

that, you know, there was a problem, there is a problem with women in financial services in the UK, which the government actually recognised about 10 years ago and set up the women in finance charter. And then, you know, obviously they have been trying to improve the number of women in financial services roles, because the belief is, was that by having more diversity around the table, you ultimately get better decisions. Now, I think about that in diversity in its broadest form, but certainly, you know, it will also apply to gender. And so we've been working really, really hard with the government, with other financial services firms to broaden the accessibility of insurance,

of banking, of investment banking to women. And it is by broadening that accessibility, I think that we can bring a more diverse workforce in. Partly because of this work, you were appointed at Dame in January 24. What? And for the listeners who don't know, it's the, it's kind of the equivalent of being knighted, right, for women. And it's a huge thing, right? Yes.

In the English society, what did it mean for you personally? Well, first of all, you know, I was born in the Ronda Valley in South Wales in the UK. my both of my grandparents were minors. I went to a comprehensive school and I started at Commercial Union as a graduate trainee not knowing even really what insurance was or thinking about it. So to end up with a damehood,

which actually was for contributions to business, for contributions to climate and for contributions to gender, for those three things, I mean, it meant the world to me, obviously. It was a really, it was a really phenomenal day for me and my family. And, you know, my mom and my, you know, my dad had passed away at that point.

And I just know he would have been so proud of that. But to just think that you can come from where I came from, you know, to that was just amazing. And I don't take that for granted at all. And, you know, and I do think that, you know, for somebody like me, when I go out to schools and speak to the kids and I'll go back to schools, I do something called speakers for schools. when I go back to schools like the school that I went to, you know, for kids to be able to see that, you can make it in business, you know, from the position that I came from, I think that's really important too. I saw a piece of research once, which said that if you were knighted or appointed a dame,

the results of the company deteriorated afterwards because people thought more, because people thought more about society and saw themselves a bit more as a state person and therefore were more hesitant for instance to lay off people. Do you think there is a kernel of truth in that? No. I mean, I don't think any differently to how I thought before. I mean, I don't actually use the title in the office or at all. I mean, you know, it will get used if I go to dinners by other people, but I don't do that. If people call me Dame Amanda, I will say, please don't call me that. Call me Amanda. That's my name. And I do think that it hasn't, one iota changed. And if you look at the performance of Aviva, you know, last year, it was better than the performance

of Aviva the year before. And we will continue to make the tough decisions as we'll have to make as we go through the integration of Direct Line and Aviva over the coming months. You know, decisions still need to be taken. And it hasn't in one way changed my approach. Now, you often talk about the fact that you are from Wales and on this wonderful program, Desert Island, you even played the national, you know, the Welsh National Lantern. Absolutely.

What does it mean to be Welsh? I mean, I'm incredibly proud of being Welsh. So, you know, Wales is a very small country, you know, three, four million people, which has actually, think about, you know, what has happened to it. You know, there's been no investment really. Mining was the key industry and obviously the mines were closed quite rightly. You know, I mean, the way it was done was probably not the way I would have done it, but they were closed in the 1980s and nothing ever replaced it. And so I think, you know, being Welsh and coming from that background, that does mean

a lot to me. I'm very, very proud of it. I mean, obviously, you know, very proud of rugby, very proud of music, the things that Welsh people are very proud of, but also proud of just the era that I came from and my background, what my parents achieved and, you know, what my grandparents achieved. Do you think it's a driving force in you? I think the drive, I think what is the driving force is that coming from that background and seeing what happened to that community and knowing that nothing replaced the work that was. taken away, there what there is always in me that, that will, you know, that I will, I will do better for myself than, than that, because I can. Definitely that is a driving force. When I saw what was

done to a lot of people there, and still today, you know, my mum still lives in, in the Rond of valley and I go back there regularly and you see that it still has not recovered. That is definitely a driving force, yes. You played a lot of instruments when you were younger. What, what, what, what, What's the function of music in your life? Oh, wow, I mean, so I played the piano and the clarinet, and of course, like all Goodwellf people, I sang in the local chapel and in the choir. I think music is just a real escape.

I love all sorts of music. You know, yesterday I was listening to Chapel Rowan and Sabrina Carpenter and that I can be also listening to musicals. I'm going to see Hamilton on Friday. I just think that music is really important to me. I love it. In many respects, it's a leveler. Some of the most talented musicians, you know, I just have that real gift. Now, I don't have the real gift. I had to work hard at it.

But I really respect it as a talent that people have. And there was always music on in our house. Always. You know, my mom, even today, the first thing she does when she gets up at 5 o'clock in the morning is she will stick on, you know, usually a bunch of opera or, you know, music songs from the musicals or whatever. she'll still have music on the whole day. You have a social media channel about your shoes. What is that about? That was nothing to do with me. I have to say, there was about 10, 12 years ago.

And there's an insurance conference in Manchester called Bieber. And we were on our way to this conference. And I like wearing different types of shoes. And one of my team when I was at Axis said, I think we should create a social media account for your shoes, Amanda. And I was like, oh, right, yeah, okay. Next thing I knew they had this. account. And it would basically follow my shoes around the conference, you know, the different

shoes. And then, of course, it became a bit of a thing. But yes, it's just a bit of fun. Good. What do you read? So, look, I used to read loads and loads of novels, business books. Today, I'm more of a podcast listener, I have to say, including your very own good podcast. I must have listened now to about 15 or 20 of them. But I think that I listen to the podcast. It's a way of sort of, you know, finding out what's going on. So rest is politics. I really like that. Are you sort of listening? You're listening to the debates. At the same time as you can sometimes be doing something else. I can be on the treadmill or I can be on my bike or doing something else. So I think it's quite an efficient use of time. So I really love that.

Lastly, we got many thousand young listeners. What is your best advice to young people? Well, first of all, I think build up your resilience. I think it's tough for young people today. If we think about, you know, the environment in which they're growing up in, social media, you know, the constant feedback, you know, whether it's climate or the transition, the changing workforce with generative AI, I think they're going to need to be really resilient. So they should really think about things that they can do to build their resilience. And then the second thing I would say is like take the opportunities that are given to you.

There's so many times that people overthink things. You know, sometimes things will work out and sometimes they will not, but take opportunities because you just never know where they're going to end up. So whether that's at school, go to different clubs, try singing, try musical instruments, try different sports, just take those real opportunities. And you just never know what might happen. Well, Amanda, you are a wonderful example of somebody who's taking all the opportunities and really made so much out of it.

It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you, very, very impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.