Aviva’s UK Life business chief executive Andy Briggs has opened up about the company’s return to the advice market and said that Aviva does not have any plans to buy advice firms.
Last month Aviva announced it would return to face-to-face advice later this year with a new advice division.
Briggs (pictured) said this decision was driven by customer demand following pension freedoms.
‘What we are generally finding post-pension freedoms and post retail distribution review (RDR) is high net worth individuals are happy to go with IFAs and pay for fees for advice in that market,’ he said.
‘We have an awful lot of mass market and mass affluent customers and they are turning to us and wanting advice and guidance. So it is very much a response to customer demand around pensions freedoms.’
When asked if Aviva would ever consider buying IFAs for this advice arm, Briggs said ‘that is not on our agenda’.
‘We own Sesame Bankhall Group, that is performing very well but we have pulled out of the wealth advice business, and we are focusing on the Bankhall directly authorised model.’
Briggs also indicated that Aviva is looking to do more in the robo-advice space, and is keen to focus on this through its development team, which is called Digital Garage.
‘We already have elements of [robo-advice] within our customer savings platform,’ he said. ‘We are helping to guide customers to think around their options and that is definitely something for our Digital Garage which we are hoping to focus on and develop.’
Source: City Wire