Aviva PLC – Lobbying Governance & Transparency

Sign up to access all our data and the evidence and analysis underlying our overall scores. Once you've created an account, we'll get in touch with further details:

Lobbying Governance

Overall Assessment	Analysis	Score
Strong	Aviva discloses a clear governance framework that extends specifically to its climate-related lobbying, covering both its own advocacy and its participation in trade associations. The company states that “our approach and processes related to climate advocacy are managed by the Group Public Affairs team,” and that these processes are “reviewed and monitored by the Public Policy team,” indicating an established mechanism for continual oversight. It further explains that “the trade associations that we are members of should be aligned with our values and policies… in the absence of this alignment, we would seek to engage the organisation… and if necessary distance ourselves from them,” showing an active procedure for ensuring indirect lobbying alignment. Direct lobbying is also addressed, with a public commitment to “using our influence to advocate for the systemic change needed to reach Net Zero before 2050 and ensuring alignment with this across all political activity.” Responsibility is clearly assigned: “Oversight of these activities and principles is the responsibility of the Customer and Sustainability Committee… which reports to the Aviva plc Board,” while “our executive level Brand and Corporate Affairs Director, Stephen Doherty, is responsible for oversight of our public policy activities.” Together these disclosures demonstrate strong governance of both direct and indirect climate lobbying, although the company does not disclose a standalone, published lobbying-alignment audit or third-party review, and therefore transparency on the outcomes of its oversight remains limited. View Sources	B

Overall Assessment

Analysis

Score

Strong

Aviva discloses a clear governance framework that extends specifically to its climate-related lobbying, covering both its own advocacy and its participation in trade associations. The company states that “our approach and processes related to climate advocacy are managed by the Group Public Affairs team,” and that these processes are “reviewed and monitored by the Public Policy team,” indicating an established mechanism for continual oversight. It further explains that “the trade associations that we are members of should be aligned with our values and policies… in the absence of this alignment, we would seek to engage the organisation… and if necessary distance ourselves from them,” showing an active procedure for ensuring indirect lobbying alignment. Direct lobbying is also addressed, with a public commitment to “using our influence to advocate for the systemic change needed to reach Net Zero before 2050 and ensuring alignment with this across all political activity.” Responsibility is clearly assigned: “Oversight of these activities and principles is the responsibility of the Customer and Sustainability Committee… which reports to the Aviva plc Board,” while “our executive level Brand and Corporate Affairs Director, Stephen Doherty, is responsible for oversight of our public policy activities.” Together these disclosures demonstrate strong governance of both direct and indirect climate lobbying, although the company does not disclose a standalone, published lobbying-alignment audit or third-party review, and therefore transparency on the outcomes of its oversight remains limited.

View Sources

Lobbying Transparency

Overall Assessment	Analysis	Score
Comprehensive	Aviva PLC provides extensive and specific information about every aspect of its climate-policy lobbying. On the policies themselves, it identifies multiple named measures it has tried to influence, including the UK Pension Schemes Bill, the proposed “UK Net Zero Investment Plan”, its call for the UK Government to “mandate UK regulated financial institutions to develop credible transition plans”, reform of Solvency II, the creation of an International Platform for Climate Finance and support for explicit carbon-pricing instruments such as “Carbon budgets” and “Emissions Trading Schemes”. The company is equally open about how it lobbies: disclosures describe publishing joint policy papers with WWF, “oral and written evidence to the Treasury Select Committee”, a public campaign ahead of the House of Commons’ second reading of the Pension Schemes Bill, leadership of advocacy workstreams in GFANZ, NZ AOA and NZ IA, and direct engagement with bodies such as the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, the European Commission and the Vatican. Finally, Aviva sets out clear, measurable outcomes it is pursuing, for example that auto-enrolment default pension funds “achieve net-zero carbon emissions status by 2050”, that governments “set economy-wide Net Zero targets for 2050 or (ideally) earlier”, that a global carbon price of around US$75 t/CO₂ be introduced by 2030, and that fossil-fuel subsidies be redirected to clean energy and a just transition. Together, these disclosures demonstrate a comprehensive level of transparency around the company’s climate lobbying intentions, methods and objectives.	A