We’ve created our adviser underwriting centre to make the underwriting process quicker and easier for you. It’s full of information, tips and resources to help things run more smoothly. From our general underwriting philosophy to details of our approach to medical conditions, lifestyle, occupations and other factors, you’ll find it all here.
Underwriting at Aviva
Our philosophy and approach
Our philosophy
Robert Morrison, Chief Underwriting Officer: "Our commitment is to provide your customers with a digital underwriting experience that is straightforward and effortless whilst ensuring every customer is assessed as an individual in terms of the risk they present, thereby providing the fairest premium."
Our approach
We’re proud to say that around 8 out of 10 customers receive an immediate decision, rising to around 9 out of 10 within 48 hours. That’s because we’ve created a process that’s simple, yet detailed enough to give us all the information we need to make an informed decision.
By combining our intelligent underwriting systems and the knowledge of our underwriters, we aim to ensure that even our most complex cases can be handled as quickly as possible.
Experienced underwriters
All our underwriters have to go through our Underwriting Academy. Through developing an understanding of medical conditions, technical knowledge and risk, we’re confident that every one of them is capable of making the right decision for your clients.
Our changing technology
We’re constantly trying to make the underwriting process more streamlined for you, which is why we have introduced e-AMRAs. Combining this with our real-time tracking and automated iGPR solution helps to ensure that you and your clients have a speedy and well-informed underwriting journey.
ABI Mental Health Standards
At Aviva we’ve fully embedded the ABI Mental Health Standards to support you and your customers.
Flexible financial underwriting
When we need information:
We start asking for financial information when the intended overall cover in the market is:
- Over £2,000,000 life cover
- Over £750,000 critical illness cover
Although, if we have clarity around the purpose of cover, we do not routinely aggregate business and personal cover when determining any financial requirements.
NB: Lower limits of £375,000 CI cover apply for house persons, retired, students and the unemployed.
Methods of information gathering
We have a flexible approach to financial evidence gathering:
- Submit online as part of the application process.
- Financial questionnaire
- A recorded call with a high value underwriter at any time during the underwriting process (even at pre-sales stage) for up to £3m life cover and/or £1m CI cover (select option 2 on the support line 0800 092 9964)
- We don't insist on a formal financial questionnaire if a bespoke report covers off the salient points, including overall cover.
- Factfinds instead of financial questionnaire for up to £3m life cover and/or £1.5m CI cover.
- High market limits, where supporting evidence is needed for more than £4m life cover or £2m CI cover.
- We don't ask independent third parties to countersign financial questionnaires.
- We can download copies of accounts from Companies House so you don't have to.
Guides, forms and calculators
Download our PDFs for further information about our underwriting processes and use our calculators to find out your client's BMI and rating or how much income protection cover they maybe entitled to.
BMI calculator
Work out your client's BMI and rating*
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Income Protection Maximum Benefit calculator
Find out how much cover you client is entitled to in relation to their income.