Aviva PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aviva Plc 4-year 2020 results and strategy update. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. I must advise you this conference is being recorded today on Thursday 4th March 2021. I will now hand the conference over to your Group CEO, Amanda Blanc. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2020 results presentation. As usual, I'm joined today by Jason Windsor, our CFO. I know I've said this at previous financial updates, but it's worth repeating, so I do hope you're all staying safe and keeping well. Before we get into the detail of today, let me start by saying how incredibly proud I am of Aviva's response to COVID. Our people have consistently stepped up and delivered beyond expectations since we sent them home to work remotely in March last year. They continue to deliver for our customers doing what I think we can all agree have been the most challenging of circumstances. And Aviva has also stepped up the support we provide to our communities. From £43 million of charitable and community donations to providing support to highly deserving NHS staff. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to each and every one of our employees. Turning to today's agenda, shown on slide three. First, I will provide an update on the progress we are making towards our strategic priorities. Second, Jason will take you through the full year results. And finally, I will provide you with further colour on how we are transforming performance and accelerating growth in the UK. We'll then open the lines for your questions. So let's turn to slide five. Seven months ago I set out three strategic priorities for Aviva which to remind you were focus the portfolio, transform performance and financial strength. I'm pleased to report that we are making excellent progress on all fronts. We said we would focus on the strongest businesses in the UK, Ireland and Canada and manage our international businesses for long-term shareholder value and that is exactly what we have done. In less than seven months we have announced the exit of France, Singapore, Italy, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam and Turkey. The sales of France and Italy are of course the most significant steps forward in Aviva's strategic transformation. We have strengthened our capital and liquidity, materially reduced our balance sheet exposure to macro risks and realised significant value for our shareholders. We have also made good early progress on the critical task of transforming the performance of our core markets, effectively the new Aviva, but there is still much to do. More on this in a moment. Central to the delivery of our strategic priorities is the financial strength of the business. We continue to benefit from a robust balance sheet with a healthy capital surplus of £13 billion, cover ratio of 202% and central equitability of £4.1 billion. These will serve to strengthen as we complete the announced disposals in 2021. In November, we set out our clear intent to deliver a sustainable, ordinary dividend to our shareholders, covered by capital generation, cash remittances and growth from our core businesses. Today we are announcing a full year 2020 dividend of 21 pence per share, with a final dividend of 14 pence per share. Now moving on to discuss our trading performance on slide 6. Despite the challenges we all face in 2020, our financial and trading performance has been robust, with record trading results in the key growth areas. 8% year-on-year commercial lines growth.

£6 billion of BPA in new business sales is a record for Aviva.