Article ID: 85ba26820cf938c8c61cab920f31679f7262db938a523e0e92f8b2e72cee2100
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UKGI boss confirms that insurer wants to ‘ramp up’ specialty personal lines provision, leveraging DLG assets to secure greater market share where Aviva is currently sparse Aviva has ringfenced “specialty personal lines” delivered via subsidiary Direct Line Group (DLG) as “a big growth opportunity” moving forward, with this class of business having the ability to plug the insurer’s current market share gaps. This is according to Jason Storah, Aviva’s chief executive of UK and Ireland general insurance, who spoke to Insurance Times following the publication of the insurer’s 2026 half-year financial results on 14 August 2026. Within this trading announcement, Aviva confirmed that its UK and Ireland personal lines portfolio had performed exceptionally well over the first six months of the year, boosting gross written premium (GWP) by 98% compared to 2025’s H1 – in large part thanks to the July 2025 purchase of DLG. The insurer’s personal lines GWP now sits at £3,679m – versus £1,858m for the same reporting period last year – while its undiscounted combined operating ratio (COR) is 93.1 %. This is a slight improvement on the 93.9% undiscounted COR recorded for H1 2025. The financial report stated: “UK personal lines premiums grew 98% to £3,679m, reflecting the acquisition of Direct Line and growth in intermediated business, including the addition of the home partnership with Nationwide.” Aviva’s partnership with Nationwide Building Society commenced in late 2025, with the insurer assuming responsibility for the bank’s home and travel insurance contracts from former provider RSA. Growth across Aviva’s personal lines book is all the more welcome considering that its commercial lines portfolio saw GWP fall by 4% over the first half of 2026 – a physical indicator of current soft market conditions, Storah noted. Pinpointing growth opportunities Aviva is so far pleased with the financial turnaround it has managed to instigate at DLG, which Storah described as “really improved growth and significantly improved profitability”, supported by the brand’s visibility across price comparison websites – it launched on these sites in December 2024. “We’re doubling down already on that business,” Storah added. “We expect that will continue and there’s more to earn there. “So far, we’ve realised £100m of savings from the acquisition. We expect that to be £130m by the end of the year and that will flow through into next year and increase next year. So, there’s plenty more to go at from a growth, optimising and efficiency gain in that business.” Storah is particularly excited, however, about DLG’s specialty personal lines proposition – this includes breakdown cover business Green Flag and Direct Line for Business, which serves individuals that have a commercial interest, such as landlords or van owners. Storah additionally counts DLG’s pet insurance product in this bucket. For him, this suite of adjacent services opens doors for Aviva that have so far been locked, presenting an ideal opportunity for the insurer to attempt to grow its market share. He explained: “With our existing books between Aviva and Direct Line Group, our market share is typically over 20%. But in the specialty personal lines business [specifically], our market share currently is about 6% to 7%. “If you think we’ve got 22 million customers in the UK, historically Aviva has never sold any of them pet insurance. Well, a lot of them have pet insurance. So that’s a big growth opportunity. Same with the Green Flag business [and] Direct Line for Business. “If we just get [improved] market share in the specialty lines business, that’s significant growth upside. And the specialty [personal] lines market is the same size as the UK property market, just [to] give a sense of the opportunity ahead of us. Read: Aviva and DLG personal lines integration ‘well on track’ ahead of part VII process Read: Catch up on insurers’ 2026 half-year financial results Explore more insurer related content here, or discover more news here “On specialty personal lines, we really want to ramp up that part of the business and apply Aviva’s scale and growth.” Owen Morris, UK personal lines chief executive at Aviva, is on the same page as Storah. Speaking to Insurance Times during May 2026’s Biba Conference, he confirmed that the insurer plans to relaunch DLG’s pet insurance proposition by the end of the year. Integration timeline Storah noted that although the part VII process – a post-acquisition statutory mechanism under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 that formally transfers insurance policies, banking assets and liabilities from the bought business to the acquirer – and “capital benefits” still need to be realised following completion of the DLG transaction, “for all intents and purposes, the businesses are integrated”. A big component of the integration, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) process – known as Tupe – is now finished, for example, with 8,000 DLG employees now Aviva staff. Storah continued: “The teams are now unified. They’ve got single leaders across different brands, different parts of the business. The claims, customer service and operations are all unified. “We’ve brought together the single view of who the key partners, outsourcing and other suppliers are. So, it’s running as one business. There’s just four more parts of the overall integration still to run, which will take through until 2028.” Since joining Insurance Times, Katie has successfully obtained a number of industry accolades. At trade body Biba's 2025 Journalist and Media Awards, for example, Katie was named the overall winner and received the Journalist of the Year trophy, alongside the Best Thought Leadership Award for her briefing article on reproductive health MGA Juniper and how insurance can be used to positively impact taboo subjects.View full Profile Insurance Times secures Insurance DataLab as new data partner for Top 50 Brokers report Aviva swerves any ‘big proclamations’ around redundancies as it continues AI investment Aviva refuses ‘to chase unprofitable’ commercial lines business amid soft market as GWP tumbles 4% in HY results – Jason Storah No comments yet
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