Aviva's UK and Ireland general insurance boss Jason Storah has declined to say how the company's AI investment will affect headcount, as the insurer rolls out virtual assistants and AI-enabled claims agents across its business.
Storah told The Insurance Times that Aviva is exploring "how many people do we need to grow this business going forward versus perhaps how many people we would have needed to grow over the last five years." He did not provide figures or projections on the workforce impact.
The comments follow Aviva's half-year results, in which the company highlighted AI as a central part of its growth strategy. Group chief executive Dame Amanda Blanc said Aviva has "a significant opportunity to apply artificial intelligence to deliver an even better service to customers, meet more of our customers' needs over their lifetime and drive even more value for our shareholders."
What Aviva says about AI and jobs
Storah said the company is not making public predictions about what AI will mean for jobs. "We're not making big calls and predictions about what [increased AI usage is] going to do structurally to our business," he said. "We know it's changing our business. We know there are things that will be very different in the future. I don't think it's for us to make big proclamations to what the future is going to look like."
He pointed to claims handling as an area where AI is already changing operations. "In claims, for instance, AI means that 24 hours a day, a person who's got a claim can call in and speak to somebody - whether it's a person or a virtual assistant enabled by AI."
Storah framed the company's approach as customer-led rather than workforce-driven: "What we care about is where do we see [AI] improving customer experience? Where do we see it making our people more efficient? Where does it mean that we get better cost outcomes, better indemnity outcomes?"
Rollout plans for the rest of the year
Aviva has already deployed AI in specific areas, including faster review times in medical underwriting and automated quality assurance in its Wealth division. The company said more launches are due later in 2026, including a virtual assistant and an AI-enabled claims agent, both of which "will be able to support our customers."
The insurer's half-year statement described its data assets and multichannel distribution as "strong foundations to deploy AI at scale across the group."
For insurance professionals, the key signal is that Aviva is treating AI as a growth lever, not just a cost-cutting tool - but it has not committed to protecting existing roles. The jobs conversation across the sector is just beginning, and how Aviva's trade-offs between efficiency and staffing play out will be a useful marker for [AI for Insurance](https://completeaitraining.com/tag/insurance/). Workers who want to stay ahead should watch how the balance between human and automated roles develops in claims and underwriting functions, where [AI for Customer Support](https://completeaitraining.com/tag/customer-support/) tools are rapidly moving from pilots to core operations.
Why this matters for insurance workers
Insurance professionals are being asked to work alongside AI tools that operate 24/7 in areas like claims and customer service. Aviva's own statement acknowledges the shift: "We are already delivering tangible benefits from AI, from faster review times in medical ifthping to automated quality assurance in Wealth." For someone in an insurance role, this means the skill bar is rising - not because jobs are disappearing, but because the tools are becoming standard and companies may hire differently than they have in the past. The people who understand what these tools can - and cannot - do will likely have an edge as insurers scale their deployments.
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