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I joined the company that was last week rechristened Aviva 9 years and 2 months ago, 6 weeks after the CGU, NU merger was announced. You could say I never really belonged to a “legacy company”. As my colleagues swore allegiance to General Accident, CU, NU and L&E, it was really clear to me that people form allegiances to brands over many years and real passion and loyalty underpins these allegiance.

I’ve been reflecting on this over the past week, in which we became a global one under the Aviva brand…

Now those of you who know me will know that I can be a bit emotional, laugh a lot and shed the odd tear or two or three or four. I don’t mind saying that out loud, or even writing it down, even in an industry maybe not always renowned for its emotion.

In Aviva last week, emotion was everywhere you looked.

There was emotion when the Aviva flag was raised above the building in Surrey Street in Norwich.

I had a tear in my eye, not because of the lovely yellow flag, the gust of wind that lifted it at just the right point on a very still day, or even because of Igal’s poignant words shared through a loudhailer. The tears were because of the thousand or more people who stood on Surrey Street in the sunshine, cheering and whooping as the Aviva flag went up. And I know this emotion was shared all around the UK, as the teams in Perth were welcomed into the building by pipers and as individual teams around the UK did things that were personal to them to mark the occasion.

There was emotion last week from the broker who wrote to John and I and said…

“…although the world has got used to big name changes over recent years, I think your style has been extraordinary… thank you for what you are doing to support the “local” broker.  It continues to be such a pleasure dealing with your local people here, supported by your HQ”.

There was emotion last week all around at the many celebrations that went on around the company.

I was invited to join an after work “Aviva day” celebration with one of my teams. The passion and laughter was palpable. To say they had embraced Aviva day was an understatement.  I was asked to judge a contest to determine who was wearing the most unique yellow item to celebrate Aviva day, the winner I chose wore custard……

The buzz around our teams last week was phenomenal, the passion, allegiance and loyalties transferring to a new brand, seemingly, almost impossibly stronger than before. This hasn’t happened by accident, we’ve worked so hard to make this the case, and I so know it’s the start of the journey not the end. The challenge now is keeping the spirit of 1 June alive, and living up to our promises to our people, because if our staff feel this good about Aviva then our customers, brokers and partners who they deal with everyday will feel it too.

Janice xxx