The FTSE 100 insurer, which says it is the UK’s largest wealth business by assets at £261bn, set out the new ambition at its first wealth-focused investor briefing since 2023.
Aviva expects its wealth business to make more than £500m of operating profit by 2032, close to double the £280m it is targeting for 2027, as it puts the UK wealth market at the centre of the group’s growth plans.
The insurer set out the goal in a stock exchange announcement on 16 October, ahead of a Wealth “In Focus” briefing for investors and analysts hosted by group chief executive Amanda Blanc. Doug Brown, chief executive of insurance, wealth and retirement, and Michele Golunska, managing director of wealth, presented. The previous wealth session in the series was held in 2023.
Aviva said it was “on track” for the 2027 ambition. It added that wealth operating profit has doubled since 2019, driven by its workplace and adviser platform propositions, “where we have significant scale”.
The group puts its wealth assets at £261bn and says it has nearly six million wealth customers. It also pointed to a wider UK customer base of 21.8 million, which it sees as a pool for selling more wealth products. The announcement did not give net flows, adviser numbers or a split of assets between the workplace and adviser platform businesses.
The target rests on Aviva’s own reading of the market. It expects UK wealth to grow by more than 10 per cent a year, a figure it says combines net flows and asset growth, and forecasts that the asset pool will reach £7.5tn by 2035 with an associated profit pool of about £10bn. The estimates are based on Aviva’s analysis of data from Fundscape, Broadridge, Platforum and company reporting.
Aviva named new technology, including AI, and regulation such as the Pension Schemes Act 2026 as the changes opening up growth. It said further organic growth could come from expanding its direct wealth, advice and targeted support propositions, though it put no figures on those businesses.
Targeted support is the new regulated service, sitting between guidance and full advice, that came out of the FCA’s advice guidance boundary review. Aviva won FCA approval to offer it in June and said at the time it would roll the service out to pension customers in phases from summer 2026.
For advice firms, the briefing is a reminder that a provider which has built much of its wealth profit on the adviser platform is also building direct and guidance-led routes to the same savers. How Aviva balances those channels will matter to firms weighing their platform relationships, particularly as the group chases a target that implies profit almost doubling in five years.
The policy backdrop Aviva is counting on is still moving. Chancellor John Healey delivers the Budget on 28 October, and unused defined contribution pension pots come into scope for inheritance tax from April 2027.
