Aviva’s chief executive, Amanda Blanc, has reiterated the insurer’s commitment to climate goals in the face of growing pushback against net zero ambitions in the US and UK.
On Thursday Aviva’s shares hit their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, with investors cheering a rise in profits, and fresh payouts for investors worth 13.1p a share.
Blanc told journalists that the insurer was not wavering on climate transition plans, which she said were an important step in responding to a further rise in extreme weather events affecting its insurance business.
“We remain committed to our ambition,” she said on Thursday. “It’s also an important priority for many of our clients, but I would always put this into the context of extreme weather conditions, climate change and the impact that that has on our insurance business that actually insures properties.”
Blanc, who became a dame commander in the honours list in December 2023 in part for her services to net zero, said: “If you think about the last number of years: the wildfires we saw in Canada last year, the floods in the UK, the frequency of these weather events, then we do think that that is something that we have to think very carefully about – the insurability of these properties as climate changes.”
Finance companies are facing pressure over their green commitments after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, which has sparked a fresh climate backlash and a renewed push for higher production of oil and gas.
A wave of US banks have since dropped membership of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, throwing the future of the UN-backed climate collective into doubt. Banks that have left include JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. The UK lenders HSBC and Barclays followed suit.
Those departures have led to a schism in the financial world. Standard Chartered’s chief executive, Bill Winters, condemned rivals for having jumped on the climate bandwagon when it was “fashionable” but having since rolled back on their green ambitions or gone quiet on the subject. “Shame on them”, he said last month.
Blanc noted that Aviva had this year published a fresh net zero transition plan, seeking to cut emissions from its immediate operations by 90% by 2030, compared with 2019, and buy all its electricity from renewable sources. She said emissions linked to clients was a “more complex” issue to tackle but “something we will keep a close eye on”.
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She said: “The important thing for us is to offer optionality for either investors, customers, or people at the funds that they want to invest in, but also thinking about the practical side of that for our insurance business itself.”
Aviva reported a 22% jump in operating profit to £1bn for the six months to June, up from £875m a year earlier, helped by strong growth in general insurance premiums in the UK and Ireland and a greater number of assets flowing into its wealth business. Its shares jumped as much as 4.7% to about £6.90, before closing up nearly 2.6% at £6.75.
The shares of the rival insurer Admiral rose by almost 6% after it reported a 67% increase in half-year profits to £516m, as competitive pricing helped to boost the performance of its UK car insurance division.