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Name: Aviva Insurance
Quote Rating: 3.0 out of 5 No. of Reviews: 55

The group is the world's fifth largest insurance provider, with over 50 million customers in 28 countries, and is the largest insurance service provider in the UK. It is also Europe's leading provider of life and pension products. The current group was formed by the merger of Norwich Union and CGU in 2002, with the latter being the result of a merger in 1998 between Commercial Union and General Accident. On October 20th 2009, the group's shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Having finally completed the changeover from the old Norwich Union brand (and taken all the flack that came from doing so) the company can now concentrate fully on its business. However, the old name isn't totally dead since a Google search for 'Norwich Union' puts Aviva at the top of the search list, the Norwich Union clock still stands and you can still enter the www.norwichunion.co.uk site address - but you're redirected to the www.aviva.co.uk site.

In view of its size and position, it's hardly surprising that the website offers an extensive range of insurance products. These include motor insurance for cars, vans and motor cycles, with driveway cover and short term policies available. You can also get life insurance, home and contents cover, private health, travel, personal accident and business insurance as well as home emergency cover and protection against identity theft.

Home and car cover show comparisons with other firms' prices, 'even if they're cheaper' as the advertising campaign said. There are often some special offers available and you can manage your policies online.

One advantage of using a big company such as Aviva is that it generally handles everything in-house without needing to use third party underwriters and providers (see our company review pages for how that normally goes). Its car breakdown cover is provided by the RAC, which was acquired by Aviva in 2005 at a cost of £1.2 billion and so this is kept within the family also. The one exception seems to be the home emergency cover, which is underwritten by Inter Partner Assistance SA, a company based in Belgium that is owned by AXA Assistance, a member of the French-owned AXA Group.

Aside from selling insurance, the site has some other features such as driving advice, a route planner and a life cover calculator. It also offers other financial products for savings and investments as well as pension and retirement products that include equity release, annuities and income draw down schemes -- but you want to read up on the news about such products before buying in.

The group states it is heavily into sport and is the number one sponsor in UK athletics apparently, despite having shut down some key sports facilities under the old NU name before switching. It developed the Aviva UKA Academy in partnership with UK Athletics and six schemes have been set up. These aim to help future sporting stars reach their full potential as well as enabling children to be healthier. Support is also given to Great Britain and Northern Ireland teams at all levels of age and ability. The School Sport Matters campaign has been developed in conjunction with the Daily Telegraph to champion achievements within school sport.

An announcement was made in 2003 that some call centre operations were to be moved out to India. This has not led to universal happiness among customers with complaints of the staff there being disinterested, working to inflexible scripts or unable to understand what was required - or just plain understand the words being said with accent differences on both sides of the line causing issues. This has resulted in some customers taking their business elsewhere and, in early 2007, a decision was made to switch some of the work back to the UK due to problems caused by 'cultural differences'.

The UK company has been going through a 'reattribution' exercise designed to pay out surplus funds to existing policyholders. Over £2.1 billion had already been agreed in bonuses over a three-year period but some investors were unhappy with the way amounts were calculated and contested the scheme. This had held up payments but a High Court ruling in September 2009 finally gave the go-ahead, enabling payments to almost one million policyholders.

There has been some controversy over the name which, according to polls we've seen, people are confusing with other brands/products such as Arriva - the bus company. The same goes for the website address with dozens of possible errors due to the phonetic nature of the branding. With something as serious as insurance where you hand over all your personal details, it may be advisable to bookmark the right site, www.aviva.com, if you intend on coming back to avoid problems. †

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Your Comments on Aviva:

14/03/2010 I obtained building insurance from Aviva I asked to send me written Quote sent to me I was told takes about 10 days so far n0thing has happened I tried to get same Quote online I was told unable to provide

14/03/2010 I have insured my home online with Aviva but cannot access the account in order to renew the cover. They offer a good price but make it so difficult to do. I know the user name, but the page for resetting the password just locks up. I tell them about this but do they respond? What's more their website offers instant chat help when it isn't available. How can they be trusted to protect my largest investment?

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