TL;DR

Aviva’s general insurance chief for the UK and Ireland, Jason Storah, declined to say what the insurer’s AI programme means for staffing. What he did say is the interesting part: the business is asking how many people future growth requires, measured against how many the same growth would have needed five years ago. He would not turn that into a number.

The non-answer, read closely

Storah’s framing is not a denial. Comparing the staffing a business needs now with the staffing it would once have needed is the arithmetic of headcount reduction, whether or not anyone is made redundant — growth absorbed by software rather than hiring produces the same shape on a chart, more slowly.

He was explicit about declining to forecast. Aviva is “not making big calls and predictions” about the structural effect, while conceding that the business is changing and that “there are things that will be very different in the future”. The stated priorities are customer experience, efficiency, and cost and indemnity outcomes.

The concrete example he offered was claims, where AI means a customer can reach someone at any hour — “whether it’s a person or a virtual assistant”. That substitution is stated plainly enough, just not costed.

What the results said

The interview follows half-year results in which AI featured repeatedly. Group chief executive Dame Amanda Blanc described a significant opportunity to apply the technology to service, customer lifetime value and shareholder returns. The company points to faster medical underwriting reviews and automated quality assurance in its wealth arm, with a virtual assistant and an AI claims agent both due later this year.

Looking forward

The gap between what large employers tell investors and what they tell staff is the thing to watch. Lloyds Business Barometer research published the same day found 54% of UK firms saying AI had created roles — a survey of perceptions, not payrolls. Aviva is one of the UK’s largest insurers, and a refusal to answer from that position carries more information than most affirmative answers do.