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Ian Horne:

Hello everyone, I’m Ian Horne, head of UK audience development at Citywire and today I’m joined by Mike Hogg, director of platforms at Aviva. 

There’s lots of development going on, loads of new innovations, how is Aviva keeping pace with that and how do you react to what new competitors are doing in the market?

 

Mike Hogg:

I think the first thing to say is innovation is a team sport.  People have this idea of people locked in rooms coming up with ideas.  That’s not how it works in practice.  First thing is advisers.  We have to be interested in their business.  We spend a lot of time with advisers, understanding how they’re using different technology.  The challenges and pressures they’re facing because that’s ultimately, why you innovate.  The second thing then, is third parties because as many great ideas as we might have, there are lots of great ideas in the outside world.

 

Ian Horne:

What are you doing to make sure that Aviva is properly integrated with other software and how are you smoothing over that problem for advisers?

 

Mike Hogg:

It’s historically been quite expensive to get data out of platforms. We’ve had some data into back-office systems.  What we’ve done recently, is try to really accelerate that.  So, we’ve put our transaction history, we’ve made that available through something called the Origo Integration Hub so that any back-office system can go and get that transaction history, if they want to get it.  We’ve already got IntelliFlo using that data.  What that really does is start to power all the tools that are out there for advisers.

 

Ian Horne:

Let’s look at pricing too.  How transparent is pricing now, in the platforms market and do you think advisers really know how much they’re paying and what they’re actually paying for?

 

Mike Hogg:

Look, transparency I think, in platforms has never been greater.  We’ve had MiFID, we’ve had RDR.  All the data is out there.  I think the difficulty is, is that it comes in a variety of formats.  You’ve got an illustration; you’ve got a MiFID costs and charges report.  It’s quite difficult to interrogate that.  I don’t think transparency, necessarily means simplicity either.  So, there’s a lot of data out there, what we’ve tried to do is present that in the best way we can through our reporting capability. 

 

Ian Horne:

During lockdown in the last 18 months, we’ve seen a real increase in hybrid advice.  There’s a real need to provide interactive and engaging services for clients.  So, my question to you, Mike, what has Aviva done to facilitate that and then also, have you accordingly, noticed an increase in engagement?

 

Mike Hogg:

Yes.  So, we have something called MyAviva.  So that’s our online access to people’s investments.  We offer that to every client that joins the platform and we’ve seen registration increase from 30% to 50% over the last three years.  That’s no doubt, in part, lockdown.  I think it’s also, part of a longer-term trend through the move to defined contribution, pension freedom, customers just getting more engaged with their money.  So, we’ll see that continue.  I think what providers haven’t necessarily done is really think about how they optimise platforms for hybrid as a business model, rather than just self-service.  So that’s something that we’re looking at and in particular, how we give advisers control over what a customer can and can’t do. 

 

Ian Horne:

What’s next for Aviva?

 

Mike Hogg:

Still got a bit to go on ESG.  We want to do more with the capability that we’ve got and particularly, looking at how we let advisers perform ‘what if’ analysis.  So, if they change things.  Also, looking at how they construct portfolios for ESG as well.  So more to go on that.  Big regulatory change in that space on the horizon as well.  Beyond that, we always have a programme of small incremental changes in response to feedback.  No platform’s perfect and we need to keep listening.  Then as I just said, the other big area to look at in combination with integration, is how do we really facilitate this hybrid advice model?  How do we make it more scalable, sustainable, both for clients and advice businesses?  There’s a lot to get stuck into.

 

Ian Horne:

Mike, thank you again for joining me, really great to see you again and also, thank you to everyone who’s tuned in.