Biba 2026: Aviva and DLG personal lines integration ‘well on track’ ahead of part VII process

Biba Conference 2026: Owen Morris, UK personal lines chief executive at Aviva, confirmed that the insurer’s work to merge its personal lines operations into a single business following its acquisition of Direct Line Group (DLG) in July 2025 is “really well on track”.

Speaking exclusively to Insurance Times during the 2026 Biba Conference (13 May 2026), Morris explained that Aviva was currently striving to organise 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 – by the end of the year, with associated follow up work being completed in early 2027.

Morris added that the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) process – known as Tupe – is currently underway for DLG employees and that the senior team for the new look personal lines business is now organised and established.

This includes Craig Thornton, managing director for home, Commercial Direct and rescue, and Tom Latter, personal lines finance director.

“It’s all going really on track with the plans that we laid out,” Morris said. “We’ve got various milestones this year to get through, like part VII at the end of the year and all that sort of stuff. But that underlying sense of coming together is starting to happen, which is brilliant.”

Pet product refresh

Morris believes that “the future is really exciting” for Aviva’s personal lines business – which has around 9,000 staff and £7.4m in gross written premium – because “there are some smaller products that we bought where Aviva didn’t have a position”.

This includes, for example, DLG’s Commercial Direct arm – which Morris explained is actually “80% personal lines” where it serves “individuals with some sort of commercial interest”, such as landlords or sole traders – and breakdown cover business Green Flag.

However, Morris ringfenced a “big opportunity” for the insurer as the relaunch of DLG’s pet insurance proposition – a task he aims to have completed by Q4 this year.

The pet market is not completely new ground for Aviva – Morris noted that the insurer did have a pet insurance offering in the past, but that it exited this line of business around mid-2020.

Although he believes this move “was all done for the right reasons” and “was still the right thing at the right time”, he acknowledged that “the [pet] market has massively changed since that moment” – primarily by doubling in size to be a £2bn marketplace. This has opened the door for a refreshed Aviva entry into the pet insurance world.

Morris said: “It’s something I personally wanted us to have [for] a long while. It has changed and developed as a product. Previously, everyone used to buy through their vets, but it’s much broader now. It’s become mainstream and we intend to sell it through price comparison websites (PCWs) but also direct as well.

“We think we’ll get a really good mix of those two channels because we’ve got 20 million customers here in the UK now and there’s a really big opportunity to talk to them about new products. We think it’s a really good way to connect with all our motor and home customers. Why would they not want to get pet insurance from us as well?

“The whole world moves on and you do need to be agile and prepared to say ‘right, the opportunity is now there’. There’s some wonderful people in that team that came across from DLG and we’ll build out around that kernel of expertise to really refresh [the product].”

Proud to be boring

While attending this month’s Biba Conference, Morris is keen to emphasise to attending brokers that it is “absolutely business as usual” for Aviva’s personal lines operation, describing his part of the business as “focused”, “ambitious” and “kind” in terms of doing “the right thing and [making] sure that we do it in a respectful and thoughtful way”.

He continued: “[Being] boringly consistent has worked really well for all our broker partners – we don’t chop and change.

“We need to make a fair return and we price and underwrite to achieve that. But we’re here to stay and we try and give that really good, long-term partnership that benefits us and benefits [brokers]. I know it is deliberately boring, but proudly boring and proudly here for brokers.”