YouSaid · the spoken record

Dame Amanda Blanc

lines on the record: 15
first: 2025-10-31
most recent: 2025-10-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, first of all, you know, I was born in the Ronda Valley in South Wales in the UK. Both of my grandparents were minors. I went to a comprehensive school and I started at Commercial Union as a graduate trainee, not knowing even really what insurance was or thinking about it. So to end up with a damehood, which actually was for contributions to business, for contributions to climate and for contributions to gender, for those three things, I mean, it meant the world to me, obviously. It was a really phenomenal day for me and my family. And, you know, my mom and my, you know, my dad had passed away at that point. And I just know he would have been so proud of that. But to just think that you can come from where I came from, you know, to that was just amazing.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are. Now, as far as the women in finance was concerned, what was clear was that there was a problem, there is a problem with women in financial services in the UK, which the government actually recognised about 10 years ago and set up the Women in Finance Charter. And then obviously they have been trying to improve the number of women in financial services roles because the belief is that by having more diversity around the table, you ultimately get better decisions. Now I think about that in diversity in its broadest form, but certainly it will also apply to gender. And so we've been working really, really hard with the government, with other financial services firms to broaden the accessibility of insurance, of banking, of investment banking to women. And it is by broadening that accessibility, I think, that we can bring a more diverse workforce in.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, so first of all, I would say I was asked by the government to be the women in finance champion in 2020. And”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With my CFO Charlotte Jones, I mean, she's phenomenal. You know, we have great performance management meetings with the business, regular reviews. Are you doing what you said you were going to do? If not, why? What has changed? What do we need to do differently to get to a better outcome?”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many times you see, I don't know about you, you must see it all the time. You hear leadership presentations and you hear strategies and people say, I've got this great strategy. And you look at the slides and you think, oh, yeah, that sounds really, really good. And then, you know, you sort of look back five years later and go, I wonder what happened with that, you know. And I think strategy is great. Execution is better. So, you know, I think you can, if you execute well on a sort of 80% their strategy, you would probably do better than you have 100% brilliant strategy and don't follow through on the execution. What does it mean? It means, you know, having very clear objectives for absolutely everybody in the business, from me to every single person in the contact center so that there's a real flow through. Can everybody connect with what the principal and focus objectives of the business are? Regular monitoring of the performance. So, you know.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I think listening, as much as talking, being able to communicate really well, quick and decisive decision making, but really importantly, good follow through on that decision making.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process. They've done all the fraud checks using AI models, and they can basically help the customer with the claim rather than spending the first five, ten minutes of the call taking all of the details. So I think that use case can apply to very many products. And so that combination, I think insurance is perfectly set to take real advantage of AI.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, you probably would struggle to ensure that I think an 18-year-old driving a Ferrari. I mean, is that really responsible? I don't know, you know. But yeah, I mean, we've been using all of data and machine learning for a very, very long time. If you think about how competitive and dynamic the UK market is, everybody sort of constantly using different models to get to your best pricing point. But if I think about some of the more exciting things, you know, in our claims world, for example, previously a customer would have been on calling us to check where a claim is in the process. They'd have got through to a handler, a handler would have taken details from them, looked through all the screens of all the different systems. Today we've basically used AI models to predict the likely reason why the customer is calling so that when the customer gets through on the call, they're basically speaking to a handler who can say, I can see where you are in the claims.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My gosh, massively. I mean, if I think about Eva, you know, we have got about 150 use cases on AI. I mean, look, we are very big users of AI. So if we think about our motor pricing, we've been using AI for over 10 years, machine learning. And like 98% of our retail products are priced using AI.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors to think about not just sort of taking the default pension fund and just investing in the safest assets, but thinking about investing in things like private assets that over the longer term will give a better return.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's a number of things. I think, first of all, understanding in schools that people need to understand that. Today, if you are going to retire, you're not going to have a defined benefit pension. You're only going to have a defined contribution pension. And in the UK, 15 million people will not be able to retire well. So I think getting that education, it needs to start young. And then I think it needs to carry on through their working life. I think the government can help with that, Nikolai, if I think about things like auto enrollment age, bring the age down from 22 to 18 where you start saving and increase the contribution from what it is today at 8% to 12%. These are things that we know will make a difference. So I think it's a combination of taking individual responsibility, employers can help with education. Definitely, you know, the government can help with policy. So I think it's a combination of all of those things. And then I think encourage.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The UK, Ireland and Canada, and all, you know, all the real benefits of being scale players in our market really started to shine through.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think the key decisions came with actually within the first month. So I was in a fortunate position of being on the board for a six months before I became the CEO. And really the big decision was around focusing in the portfolio. If I looked at Aviva and, you know, we had positions all across the world, but we didn't have scale positions. And coming from the background of working at Accessa for much of my career, working with Henri De Caste, you know, one of his big mantras was you need to be top three in the market that you're in order to be able to influence and to get the benefits of scale in that market. So we took decisions very early on about focusing the portfolio. We so date businesses for £8 billion within the first sort of 12 to 24 months. And by doing that, we were able to meet our second objective, which is about delevering the organization, also returning some money to shareholders. And actually what was good was by selling off those businesses where we didn't have scale positions, we basically showed the strength of the core business in”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so obviously as an insurer, we have a big balance sheet. So over £400 billion. And so we need to put those assets to really, really good use. And we do that by investing. We're a big investor in the UK. So, you know, we're a big believer in the UK. So we invest in UK infrastructure, in UK guilt, I mean also in private assets. But we also invest in corporate debt and in other things. So I think it's about getting the best return over a very long period for our shareholders and obviously also for our customers.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, in short, well, I mean, basically, it protects people, it protects businesses from bad things that can happen. And also it looks after people in their hour of need and when they want to do things like retire. So we say with you today for a better tomorrow, that's our purpose. And I suppose that encapsulates everything that we do.”
2025-10-31 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · HIGHLIGHTS: Dame Amanda Blanc - CEO of Aviva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source