Aviva boss parks her tanks on former protégé’s lawn

Within months of taking charge of Aviva in 2020 Dame Amanda Blanc had hired one of the insurance industry’s rising stars in Adam Winslow to help her push through a wide-ranging overhaul of the business.
Four years later, she is locked in a £3.3 billion takeover battle with her former colleague after Aviva lodged a surprise bid for Direct Line, which Winslow, 45, has run since March.
Aviva’s tilt at its troubled rival, which has been rejected, has stunned the City, not just because a deal would reshape Britain’s insurance industry. It has also thrust into the spotlight the relationship between Blanc, 57, and Winslow, a pair who have been dogged by rumours of tensions since it emerged last year that Winslow was leaving Aviva to attempt a turnaround of Direct Line. They are pitted directly against each other as a result of Blanc’s bid.
If she raises her offer and clinches a deal with Direct Line’s board, Aviva will swallow up the company before Winslow can prove that a nascent overhaul he is pushing through will bear fruit. That would deprive him of the opportunity to make his name by reviving the fortunes of one the best-known businesses in the UK insurance industry. A takeover would also probably put him out of a job.
The stakes are also high for Blanc. While she has significantly reshaped Aviva since becoming its chief executive, the bid for Direct Line is her boldest move yet and may come to define her legacy at the FTSE 100 company, which is Britain’s biggest composite insurer that provides both life and general cover.
She has already won plaudits for turning Aviva around. Investor frustration about lacklustre returns from the company had been festering for years when she was parachuted into the top job in July 2020.
Blanc, an insurance industry veteran, immediately set about refocusing the group on its main markets in the UK, Ireland and Canada by selling off a string of non-core businesses overseas, including operations in France, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Turkey and Vietnam.
These disposals raised more than £8 billion in proceeds and allowed Blanc to significantly increase capital returns to shareholders, with over £9 billion handed back over four years. This boosted the Aviva stock price, which has gained 84 per cent under Blanc.
“She’s really turned it around, she’s disposed of those businesses at pace,” one City analyst said. Her overhaul also won plaudits from Cevian Capital, Europe’s biggest activist investor that previously owned a stake in Aviva. Cevian sold out of the insurer last year, when it praised Blanc and her team for having done “an excellent job”.
Still, the overseas divestments by Blanc finished in December 2021 and her strategy since then has focused on increasing Aviva’s footprint in less capital intensive areas such as general insurance and wealth management, a plan that is less immediately transformational and eye-catching than her earlier disposal programme.
It has involved small acquisitions, including a £242 million deal for Probitas that led to Aviva re-entering the Lloyd’s of London insurance market after 24 years away.
Buying Direct Line would represent a gear-change. Aviva said on Wednesday night, when it detailed its bid, that acquiring its rival “would be consistent with its strategy to accelerate growth in its UK businesses and further pivot the group towards capital-light business lines”.
It would also upend Winslow’s turnaround plans.
The son of Peter Winslow, a leading figure in insurance best-known for running BGL, the provider of motor and home cover, Adam has quickly risen through the industry’s ranks and was the head of AIG’s global life business when Blanc hired him.
He joined Aviva in January 2021 as the head of its international businesses, which involved handling the mechanics of Blanc’s overseas disposals and reporting directly to her. By May that year he had been promoted to run Aviva’s general insurance division in the UK and Ireland, with Blanc saying in a statement that his “talent and capability” had been “amply demonstrated” in his previous position and that she was “delighted to appoint him to this pivotal role”.
That was in marked contrast to the announcement of his exit in August last year, when he jumped ship for Direct Line. Aviva said only that he was leaving to “pursue an external opportunity”. Given he was joining a competitor he was made to serve his full gardening leave and arrived at Direct Line only at the beginning of March.
By then the struggling FTSE 250 company had become a takeover target for Ageas, a Belgian insurer, and Winslow’s immediate task was to fight off, with success, its suitor’s £3.2 billion bid.
He has since set out a cost-cutting plan to revive the Bromley-based motor and home insurer, which was laid low by a series of profit warnings in 2022 and 2023. This has involved raiding Aviva to help him build a top team to pull off a turnaround, having poached Jane Poole from his former employer to become Direct Line’s finance chief, and Hugh Hessing to become his chief operating officer. This is unlikely to have endeared him to Blanc.
One person who knows Winslow described him as ambitious and clever, while another said: “I think he is seen generally as a man in a hurry.”
His rapid ascent through the industry will be disrupted if Blanc has her way with Aviva’s bid.