If It’s Not Right, Leave | Aviva CEO Amanda Blanc

0:00 At one of the highest points in her career, Amanda Blanc

0:03 made a decision that most executives would never make— she walked away.

0:08 If something is making you unhappy…why would you do it?

0:10 You need to move on.

0:12 She left one of the biggest jobs in global insurance with nothing lined up.

0:16 No safety net.

0:16 When you leave an organization, it's like, it's brutal, you're gone, like,

0:20 I mean, that's it.

0:21 You said you're going to go.

0:22 Your emails are off.

0:23 Everything's off...

0:24 Were you scared?

0:24 I don't know if it was scared, worried, yeah.

0:27 That instinct— to trust herself and act— has

0:30 shaped how she makes decisions ever since.

0:33 And when she later took over Aviva in the middle of a crisis,

0:36 she brought that same

0:38 approach with her— making tough calls, simplifying the business and acting fast.

0:42 You've got to do things.

0:44 You can't just talk about it.

0:45 At her first annual meeting as CEO, she was subjected to sexist comments

0:49 from shareholders in front of a live audience.

0:51 The next day, she responded publicly, writing about it on LinkedIn.

0:56 The post went viral,

0:57 sparking a wider conversation about how female

1:00 business leaders still face misogyny at work.

1:03 Criticize me if I'm doing a really bad job.

1:05 I have no problem with that...

1:06 but not for being a woman.

1:08 I mean, that’s just crazy.

1:10 These are Amanda Blanc’s Executive Decisions.

1:19 You are one of the major reasons why I pitched CNBC for Executive

1:23 Decisions.

1:24 I think you are an inspirational character,

1:26 and I'm very proud to call you a friend and acquaintance as well.

1:30 So look, Well, thank you for that.

1:31 You're very welcome.

1:32 What a build up.

1:33 Let's start off at the beginning in the Rhondda Valley.

1:35 I go straight to the fact that the coal

1:37 mining communities throughout the country were really

1:40 suffering in the 1980s and I

1:42 just kind of wonder if you can encapsulate

1:43 the kind of upbringing you had as well.

1:45 I think about my childhood, I think about it as, you know,

1:49 living, basically every house was, like, right next to each other.

1:53 Literally, rows and rows of houses going up the valleys.

1:57 Some houses had toilets.

1:58 Some houses didn't, loads and loads of community work,

2:01 lots and lots of chapel work.

2:03 I mean, I used to go to chapel,

2:06 like, twice on a Sunday, it was all about performance, music everywhere,

2:11 and a real feeling of belonging.

2:13 You know, you'd walk down the street and everybody knew you,

2:17 everybody knew your business, but in a way, you didn't mind that.

2:21 It was just really lovely.

2:22 The valleys were built around these sort of,

2:25 you know, tens of coal mines that were built

2:28 in the sort of 1800s, 1900s and became, you know, really the wealth of Wales.

2:33 Both my grandparents, grandfathers, were miners.

2:36 You know, both been down the mine from the age

2:40 of 14.

2:41 I mean, can you even imagine that going down and sort of like underground,

2:46 and his father carried him home on the first day, and like you cannot imagine.

2:50 And all of my

2:51 grandparents were all of 10, 12,14, children,

2:54 of which only probably six or seven survived.

2:57 So, the women were just basically having children every,

3:00 every year, almost of their child-bearing lives,

3:03 but honestly, like so happy, so loving,

3:07 and just really wonderful and so musical.

3:12 Was it a Yamaha that your parents bought your piano that glistened

3:16 in your most important room in the house as well.

3:20 The best room.

3:20 It was called "the best room", and it went in "the best room".

3:23 And the only time you went in "the best room" was to practice the piano,

3:27 or at Christmas,

3:28 and that was it, like you didn't go in "the best room" otherwise.

3:31 And I can remember this piano, it did not have a mark on it.

3:34 And even to today,

3:35 that piano does not have a mark on it, you know, it was like perfect.

3:38 And I used to

3:39 have to practice this piano, you know,

3:41 but my mum and dad had worked so hard for that.

3:44 My mum had three, four jobs.

3:46 You know, she would go out in the evening to work.

3:49 There was a factory

3:50 where she would basically peel the rubber off these

3:52 rubber rings that were then made into ash

3:55 trays.

3:55 And my dad was a chemical engineer, which he qualified in the evening school,

4:00 and he would travel all over the

4:02 UK selling chemicals to water treatment companies.

4:05 You could have easily been a professional musician as well.

4:08 Grade eight clarinet, I know that, and grade eight piano as well.

4:11 Did you tell yourself as a young woman growing

4:14 up that you were going to be a musician?

4:16 Oh no, look, I believed that's what, that was what I was going to be, for sure.

4:19 I mean, you know,

4:19 it was like I was in the amateur dramatics.

4:23 I honestly, like in chapel, I was doing the solo,

4:26 playing the piano, reading the recitation.

4:28 It was like, you know, everybody else out of the way,

4:32 here I am, I love doing this stuff, but I was not good enough to do that.

4:37 I was not.

4:37 I mean, look, I got to grade eight through hard work.

4:40 I got in both piano and

4:41 clarinet.

4:41 But ultimately, when I went for my interviews for university and you sort

4:47 of saw these other people, and you were like,

4:50 Okay, right, you're not good enough to do this.

4:53 And you know, one of my great strengths, I think, is that I am able to work out,

4:57 like, when I'm going to be really good at something and when I'm not.

5:00 But even at that moment, you didn't have a passion for I want to do this,

5:03 I want to work in insurance, I want to do something else?

5:05 No, I mean, look, I mean,

5:07 if I think about the school, I went to Treorchy Comprehensive School,

5:10 right.

5:10 I mean, it was, look, it was not a great school, right.

5:15 There was no money, and so,

5:18 you know, school didn't talk about business.

5:20 The most aspirational thing that somebody in

5:23 school would want to be was like a solicitor or an accountant or a teacher,

5:28 and that was really

5:30 aspirational.

5:30 It was like, oh, did you know X wants to be this?

5:33 You know, I didn't even think

5:34 about that.

5:35 So, nobody knew about business.

5:36 I mean, you know, you didn't think about.

5:39 But you did make the decision very early on to get out of Wales.

5:42 And I say, get out, I mean,

5:44 get out for your career.

5:45 And, I mean, I've seen it written a couple of times,

5:47 you had two career options, as I see it.

5:50 You could have gone work for Mid Glamorgan County Council,

5:53 or you could leave Wales, where you had all your comfort zone,

5:57 and go off to Luton with a graduate training job at Commercial Union,

6:01 which obviously later became part of Aviva,

6:03 which is an extraordinary journey as well.

6:05 Why did you choose the latter?

6:07 Because that is a really big early decision for a young woman to make.

6:10 Yeah, no, it is.

6:11 I mean, so I was, I was sort of 21 and I finished university in Liverpool,

6:14 and I did not have a Scooby Doo.

6:16 So it was like, I need to apply for some jobs.

6:18 I saw this job for Commercial Union graduate trainee,

6:20 I thought, okay, what's insurance, whatever,

6:22 I'll apply to that.

6:23 And then I had this job in Mid Glamorgan County Council, and I thought,

6:26 this is fantastic.

6:26 I can stay at home.

6:27 I can live with my mum and dad, and, you know, I can keep all

6:31 my friends that I've got,

6:33 or I can go to Luton and be a graduate trainee for Commercial Union.

6:38 And I don't know what it was, but I just thought,

6:42 if I don't go now, I'm never going to go.

6:45 Yeah.

6:46 So, I did.

6:47 And you know, I can remember my mum and dad dropping me off in a bed

6:51 and breakfast in the middle of Luton,

6:52 and it was about eight o'clock on a Sunday night,

6:54 it had taken us, like, 100 hours to get there.

6:57 I'd never been to Luton and thinking, "Oh,

6:59 this is a big decision I've just made." You know,

7:02 as you're waving them off going "see you later".

7:04 Did they help you make the decision?

7:06 No, no, they didn't, because they were really,

7:07 my mum and dad were really phenomenal at just saying,

7:10 you need to make the decision.

7:12 You know, they wanted me to do what was right for me.

7:15 As you say "I didn't have a Scooby Doo", but actually you thought, no,

7:18 I'm going to build this career.

7:20 I don't have a pre-destiny.

7:22 Oh, I definitely didn't feel like I had a predestiny, even at that point.

7:25 I think what I did was,

7:26 and this is the way I've approached everything, it's like,

7:28 you turn up and you think, I'm going to just do my best.

7:30 I'm going to do my best,

7:31 I'm going to see how this all pans out.

7:33 And the brilliant thing about the program was you

7:35 had two years of basically just going

7:38 around every single department in Commercial Union,

7:40 so you got to see the whole business,

7:42 and it was phenomenal, and they were investing time in me as

7:46 an individual.

7:46 And the other thing they insisted was you had to do your professional exams,

7:51 and if you didn't pass your professional exams every six months,

7:54 you were kicked off the program.

7:55 Wow, so there was a lot of pressure on you at an early age.

7:57 There was pressure, but I like that.

8:00 And do you still like the pressure?

8:01 Yes.

8:01 Obviously, because you're a CEO.

8:03 I like the pressure.

8:03 I like the deadline.

8:04 I like the knowing you've got to work hard

8:06 to do something.

8:07 And so that was really brilliant.

8:09 And so there was no calling,

8:11 it was just you got into it.

8:13 And then I realized I really loved underwriting and

8:15 then I thought I'll become an underwriter,

8:17 and then I was a good underwriter, and I thought,

8:19 actually, I really quite like to do sales.

8:21 And then the opportunity was

8:22 there to do sales.

8:23 So, it just opened up all of these other opportunities.

8:26 You remind me a lot of the conversation I

8:29 had with Julia Hoggett about the sexism that was

8:31 in the Financial Services.

8:32 She was in investment banking, you were in insurance in the 1990s.

8:35 And I remember saying to Julia, I was in the 1990s as well,

8:38 and I was on the other side of it as

8:39 well.

8:40 I was on the male side of the patriarchy.

8:41 I was on the male side of that sexism.

8:43 It was a very tough place to be in financial services in the nineties,

8:46 in the naughties, and perhaps

8:47 to a certain degree still is now.

8:49 How did that manifest itself in your career early on as well?

8:53 So I would say in my early career, no, really interestingly.

8:57 In the 90s, I think that it really was a meritocracy at Commercial Union.

9:01 If you were the best person for the job, you got the job and there were a lot,

9:06 you know, lots of different opportunities to do different things.

9:09 I think that what you're referring to came much later, through the 2000s,

9:15 2010s, where I would be more exposed to conferences, events,

9:21 where there would be this dynamic going on,

9:24 then I think you did experience it there, for sure.

9:28 Insurance has been, I think, a very similar culture to what I

9:31 grew up in in the nineties as well.

9:33 And it's a very drinky,

9:35 male dominated environment, but you're saying you just didn't experience that?

9:38 So I'm not saying I didn't experience,

9:40 I didn't feel intimidated by it, and I didn't feel that

9:43 I was negatively impacted by it.

9:45 I mean, you can't not experience it, Steve, because I think,

9:48 you know you only have to even walk through Leadenhall today,

9:51 you know it's not somewhere I

9:52 would want to walk through on a Thursday evening,

9:54 for example, even today, like why would you?

9:56 But they love a lunch at Leadenhall, and you don't do that.

9:58 No, I don't drink.

9:59 I don't do lunch.

10:01 And I do think that, and I've never really done a

10:04 lot of dinners, because, you know, when you have children,

10:06 I want to go home and see my children

10:08 at night.

10:09 So, I never really did that,

10:11 but I saw so many women that did and got themselves into

10:16 difficult situations, you know,

10:17 when they were drinking at some of these conferences and things

10:20 like that.

10:20 And I would always say to my team,

10:22 and I always had a, you know, a good proportion of

10:25 men and women in my team,

10:26 when we'd go to conferences, I'd say you're here to work.

10:29 Just be really, really clear about that.

10:31 Don't drink.

10:31 Don't drink.

10:32 You can drink at home.

10:34 You can drink at other times, but we're here to work,

10:37 don't get yourself into a difficult situation.

10:38 But the men can, the men can go off and drink and so,

10:42 straight away, it's a different set of rules,

10:43 even then,

10:44 even though you didn't experience sexism in so much in the 90s and the early

10:47 noughties, it's still a different set of rules for women.

10:51 That's pretty frustrating.

10:52 Well, it is.

10:53 But I would always say that to the boys as well.

10:55 I wouldn't just say it to the girls,

10:57 I would say to, you know, to my whole,

10:59 when I was AXA, you know, which is a lot of this time,

11:01 I would say to the team, right, we're going to work.

11:04 The reason we have these conferences,

11:05 so we pay money to sponsor these conferences, is that this is meant

11:08 to build business opportunities.

11:10 So, let's be very clear, that's what we're there for.

11:14 Today, when Aviva has those conferences, we put, we send security people to the

11:18 conferences as well, to just make sure that our teams are okay.

11:21 You shouldn't have to do that,

11:23 but that's what you do,

11:24 because we do not want to put any of our team in a difficult

11:27 situation.

11:28 And you know, as sad as that is, that is the situation that we operate in.

11:38 Tell me about some of the toughest decisions during those periods.

11:40 Or can you remember a

11:41 time when you made a really bad decision,

11:44 and how you react to making bad decisions?

11:46 So, I think that the good thing about being a

11:49 CEO and being in leadership is you're going to

11:51 make lots and lots of bad decisions, right,

11:53 but you've always got to think, okay, how do I turn

11:57 that into a good decision.

11:59 I was convinced that, at the end of 1997, that I wanted to

12:04 be a management consultant.

12:05 So, it was like, I'm going to go and work for a management consultant.

12:09 So, you're 30 years old at this stage.

12:10 I'm not very old, right.

12:11 Other people had said, "Are you really sure that that's what you want

12:14 to do?" Anyway, I get to do this job.

12:16 I mean, like, literally, a month in, and I'm thinking,

12:19 what am I doing?

12:20 Oh my gosh, this is, like, a massive mistake.

12:23 I should not have done this.

12:26 But the good thing about I think me and my decisions is I realize quickly

12:30 when I've made a mistake and you know, okay, you've got to give it a chance,

12:33 because in a month you don't know.

12:35 But after six months, I knew, and it was like, okay, I

12:37 need to move on from here.

12:39 I need to go back into something that I love, which is leading people.

12:42 Why do you love insurance?

12:43 I love insurance because I think it's really purposeful.

12:46 If I think about, you know, I'll

12:48 give you an example.

12:50 One of my very good friends, her husband very suddenly died 16 months ago,

12:56 and she had a life insurance policy with Aviva.

13:00 I didn't know that, and she didn't tell me that.

13:04 And then, as she was going through the grieving and the

13:08 process of trying to sort out all her

13:10 husband's affairs, she and I spoke, and she said, your team are just amazing.

13:15 I said Why?

13:16 She said, well, when I rang them and told them that,

13:19 you know, that my husband had died, and that I had

13:22 these two young daughters, you know,

13:24 eight and nine years old, yes, they dealt with my claim,

13:29 but they sent me these two beautiful teddy bears

13:32 that had the daughter's names embroidered on the

13:35 ear of the teddy bear.

13:37 In that moment of deep, deep grief, those children got some sort of

13:41 relief from those teddy bears.

13:43 Nobody told the Aviva team to do that.

13:46 Nobody.

13:46 They just did it.

13:48 And I think that that,

13:50 looking after people where they're in their most difficult time,

13:55 you know, they've had a critical illness,

13:57 they've had somebody that's passed away, they're not very

13:59 well.

13:59 They need looking after.

14:01 They need somebody to guide them through that.

14:03 I just think insurance is so purposeful.

14:05 How many other businesses can you say can do something like that?

14:09 Is that something that you have instilled in them,

14:11 or is it just them?

14:12 Good people happen to be working there.

14:14 It is the DNA of the organization, and that's why Aviva, I think, is so special,

14:18 because that's how our people think about looking after customers.

14:23 It's just knowing that people are at they're most vulnerable,

14:27 and thinking how you can, in some small way,

14:30 make it just slightly better for them.

14:32 And of course, we do things wrong,

14:34 and inevitably you get things wrong.

14:36 But I would say on the whole, what we desperately

14:39 try to do is do the right thing for you know,

14:43 the people that trust us, they trust you right,

14:46 that you're going to be there when something bad happens.

14:48 It's not a handbag or a pair of shoes,

14:51 it's a promise to pay.

14:53 And that's why I think insurance is unlike any other industry.

14:57 Well that explains a lot of why you've

14:59 loved working in the industry for so long.

15:01 You haven't always loved your career decisions though.

15:04 And perhaps one, I want to just go into

15:07 a little bit more detail,

15:08 something you haven't revealed a lot of information about previously,

15:10 you went to Zurich.

15:11 You went to Zurich in 2018, the CEO there, Mario Greco, and you left pretty

15:16 much a year later as well.

15:17 In fact, resigned after eight months, I've got written down here.

15:20 You were the CEO for EMEA.

15:21 It was a really big role.

15:23 Why did you make that decision to join and to leave?

15:26 So to join, I had been at AXA since 2011.

15:30 I'd done the job for seven, eight years.

15:33 The business had turned around.

15:34 I've always said I'm sort of not a business-as-usual leader,

15:37 I sort of like a challenge, I like to be able to do something different,

15:40 and I couldn't see that I was going to get that opportunity at AXA.

15:44 So, you know,

15:45 the opportunity came to me to go to Zurich to do this job as the CEO of EMEA.

15:52 And, hey, look, it looked like an amazing job.

15:54 Zurich is a brilliant company.

15:56 And I thought this is a really

15:57 good opportunity, okay, so, you know, what could possibly go wrong?

16:02 This was going to be great.

16:04 But I think, I have to do something that is meaningful.

16:07 I have to do something where I

16:09 feel that I've got authority to make decisions and that I can make a difference.

16:15 And the role really

16:16 was a span breaker role, as much as it was like,

16:20 you know, not presented in that way, and that was

16:22 not going to ever work for me.

16:24 And as much as I tried to make that work, ultimately not being able

16:27 to have the authority to make changes,

16:29 to make decisions, that cultural fit, it just didn't work.

16:33 And that's the word I was going to come to next- cultural.

16:37 Again, Zurich is a great

16:38 company.

16:38 Mario Greco is a great CEO,

16:40 but you've already showed us what kind of culture you have

16:44 tried to create, and what you applaud at Aviva.

16:46 Was it the wrong culture for you?

16:47 For me it was, absolutely,

16:49 and I do really think that you're at work a lot of the time.

16:55 You know, I'm in at sort of 07:30 in the morning,

16:58 I don't leave till sort of 7:30 or later at night.

17:01 So, you have to be really happy doing what you're doing.

17:04 If something is making you unhappy, then

17:06 why would you do it?

17:07 You know, you need to move on, and you need to say I made a bad call here.

17:11 But let me get this right.

17:13 You've got your two wonderful daughters.

17:15 You've got Ken, your wonderful husband, who's looking after the

17:18 girls for you as well.

17:19 You have quit Zurich without another job to go to.

17:22 That's exactly right.

17:23 Did you feel at one point, this could be a very big mistake?

17:27 Oh, yeah.

17:27 I mean, of course.

17:29 Like you make the decision and, you know, Ken and I obviously

17:32 talked about that a lot, but he said to me,

17:36 you know, you're unhappy, like this is not for you,

17:40 you're not able to do what you do, which is affect change and make a difference,

17:45 and, you know, do all of these wonderful things, so you've got to back yourself.

17:50 So, I came home on the plane from,

17:52 I was actually in Germany, I came home from Germany

17:54 and landed in in in Heathrow, and thought, okay, well, what does that mean?

17:59 Because, you know, when you leave an organization,

18:01 it's like, it's brutal, you're gone, like I mean,

18:03 that's it.

18:04 You said you're going to go.

18:05 Your emails are off.

18:07 Everything's off.

18:07 You land, you get in the car, you drive back from Heathrow to Hampshire,

18:10 which is not a very long journey.

18:12 You know, you pull up at home and you go, okay, right?

18:16 Were you scared?

18:17 I don't know if it was scared.

18:18 Worried, yeah.

18:19 I mean, you know, like I've got two daughters.

18:21 I mean you're at the peak of your career, in your early 40s.

18:26 Absolutely.

18:26 No, absolutely, I do not deny any of that.

18:28 I rang my dad that night and I told him, and

18:31 he said, "Are you happier now?" I said, "I am".

18:33 He said, "then you've made the right decision".

18:34 Yeah.

18:35 Nobody ever said, like, you know, stick it out, stick it out.

18:39 Because I just don't see the point of that, if you know that it's not right.

18:43 And I did know.

18:44 You say your parents support you, your father,

18:46 but Ken obviously supported you and told you this isn't working for you as well.

18:51 You too strike me as a fantastic couple as well.

18:54 And Ken made the decision probably about 15,

18:57 16, 17 years earlier, when you had your second daughter,

19:01 Rhiannon, to give up his career.

19:04 Now, lots of people give up their careers,

19:06 but more often than not, it's the woman who's historically

19:09 had to give up the career for the man.

19:11 That is amazing, and he had a very successful career.

19:13 He was in the same business you were in as well.

19:15 Why did you both make that decision?

19:17 Yeah, he's a physics graduate.

19:19 He's got an MBA, you know, he's a chartered insurer, absolutely.

19:22 But when we had the discussion, actually it was when Rhiannon,

19:27 I was pregnant with Rhiannon,

19:28 and I had this job offer to go to Towergate, and, you know

19:33 So we're in the early noughties now

19:34 So we would have been sort of, yes.

19:37 And I had the contract for Towergate in one hand,

19:40 and the pregnancy test in the other.

19:42 And I was like, okay,

19:43 this is going to be tricky.

19:45 I don't quite know what to do here.

19:47 Do I sign this contract or not?

19:48 And I rang my, what was going to be my future boss at Towergate, and I said,

19:52 "Look, I can't come.

19:54 I can't come.

19:54 I'm pregnant." And he said, "Well, have you

19:57 been pregnant before?" I went "Yes".

19:58 He said, "Well, you know what it's like then." I said,

20:01 "I do".

20:01 He said, "Well, you're coming, come, don't be silly, you know, it's fine."

20:05 And Ken and I had that conversation, and Ken said,

20:08 you know, okay, this will only work really if one

20:11 of us stays at home, and I'm happy to do that,

20:14 because I think that you can do really well in

20:17 this role and I'm happy to support you, but we had a deal.

20:21 And the deal was that, you know,

20:23 I would talk about work at home.

20:25 That I wouldn't come home and do this, which I

20:28 think a lot of people do, and say, "okay, that's work,

20:31 now I'm home, and I don't want to talk it."

20:34 You're a partnership, you want to do it together.

20:35 It was a partnership.

20:36 So, it was interesting, you know,

20:38 you were saying that you were talking about what you do with your wife.

20:41 Yeah, she's given me one of the questions for you in a moment.

20:43 And she's given you one of the questions for me.

20:46 And that's how, you know, so yesterday,

20:48 Ken and I went on a walk,

20:49 and he feels like he knows you, because obviously he watches you

20:52 every morning as well, and we did the whole,

20:56 okay, so what could come up in the podcast,

20:59 what are you going to talk about?

21:00 And I think that's a really lovely way of doing it,

21:03 because it means that we, you know, we're treating each other as grown-ups.

21:07 Yeah.

21:08 And it also still means that I still get the silly calls from my daughters,

21:12 which basically say, you know, where have you put this and all of that?

21:16 I'm like, isn't your dad there?

21:18 Do you resent the fact that I'm even asking you about you having

21:21 the career and your husband giving up his

21:23 career because that isn't the norm still,

21:26 we're in the third decade of the 21st Century, and it's still the case?

21:29 No, I don't resent you asking it at all,

21:31 and I think it was good to actually talk about it,

21:32 because I also think sometimes there can be this

21:35 myth that you can have it all right,

21:37 that as families, you can have it all.

21:40 You can't.

21:41 You have to make compromises.

21:43 You have to make decisions.

21:45 And so, I think you have to be realistic,

21:48 because there's all this, you know, well,

21:50 she must have had six nannies, and, you know,

21:51 she must have had this, and her husband must do this.

21:54 It's not like that.

21:55 In the real world, you have to have tough conversations, and you have to make

21:59 decisions, and particularly about how do you want your family

22:02 brought up and what you want the home

22:05 environment to be.

22:06 And whilst I totally respect that other people have made other decisions,

22:09 we made that decision for what we believed was

22:12 the right thing to do for our children.

22:14 I know you pride yourself on how you help women in the workplace

22:19 have careers and their personal life as well.

22:21 But you personally, I know at least one of your maternity leaves,

22:24 it was way too short, wasn't it?

22:26 Oh my gosh, yeah crazy.

22:26 Six, seven weeks, I think wasn't it?

22:28 Yeah, crazy.

22:28 And it was this one where I had the pregnancy test and- because, of course,

22:32 then I felt,

22:32 because one thing you cannot stop yourself feeling is guilt, you know,

22:36 so the whole time.

22:37 So, if you're at work you feel guilty that you're not at home,

22:40 if you're at home, you feel guilty you're not at work,

22:41 if you are in the hairdresser,

22:42 you feel guilty you're not at home or at work.

22:44 You know, there's this constant thing going on.

22:46 So I felt really guilty.

22:47 I felt, you know, I've taken on this big job, CEO of this big, massive,

22:51 consolidating broking business that was doing a

22:54 deal almost every week at that point,

22:56 and I felt, you know, I needed to go back to work.

22:59 But would I recommend that to other people?

23:01 I really would not.

23:02 I mean, Ken will tell you the story of,

23:05 you know, the day that I went into labor with

23:08 my first daughter, I was literally on the phone to somebody basically doing

23:13 a performance appraisal, and he was like,

23:15 you know, Amanda, come on, we need to go.

23:18 Amanda, if your team...

23:20 I know it's crazy.

23:21 I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm ashamed of that by the way.

23:23 If your team did that how annoyed would you be your team now?

23:24 I'm ashamed of that.

23:26 I am ashamed of that.

23:31 I'm going to talk to you now about the biggest job you've ever had.

23:35 The CEO job of Aviva came up and you took it in the middle of 2020,

23:39 tell me about that.

23:40 So I was on the board as a non-executive and the CEO stepped down.

23:45 There was a new chair,

23:46 and the CEO job was available, and I'm fair thinking,

23:50 oh my gosh, like, this is a job

23:53 for me.

23:54 I mean, I knew it because this was a company I had started my career in.

23:58 This is a company I had loved.

24:00 This was the company I had competed against for the whole of my career,

24:05 and I'm sitting there going, if only I wasn't the non- executive,

24:09 you know, maybe I could throw my hat in the ring to be the CEO.

24:13 And I said that to the Chair, and he said,

24:15 "Well, why don't you throw your hat in to

24:17 be the CEO?" And so, I did, and I got the job.

24:21 And, you know, so July the 6th, 2020,

24:24 I become the CEO of Aviva.

24:26 You know, a terrifying moment in terms of, like, what needed to be done,

24:30 but the proudest moment in my whole career that I end up back where I started.

24:34 So you've taken on a company that's underperforming, dividend cuts,

24:37 bad capital markets, too many operations that aren't working, and its covid.

24:42 I know it's brilliant, isn't it?

24:44 How about that for a job?

24:45 What could be better?

24:46 No, absolutely, all of the above.

24:47 So, you know, first of all, yeah, how do you lead a

24:50 business during covid?

24:51 It was me, the CFO, one other, all sort of, you know, practicing the,

24:55 sort of, the distancing and all of that.

24:58 The share price, the minute I walked in the door was £2.73.

25:02 We had this sprawling empire in Europe, which,

25:04 every time there was a bad surprise for Aviva,

25:07 it came from that.

25:07 So, it was a case of, okay, what do you do?

25:10 And I had four weeks before I had to stand up

25:13 in front of the market and do the half year results.

25:15 So, we said, okay, well, let's keep this really simple.

25:19 Three things.

25:19 Focus the portfolio.

25:20 Okay, sell the stuff that we don't believe is going to,

25:24 we can win in those markets.

25:26 De-lever the business, create financial strength.

25:28 The business was too highly levered.

25:31 Use the money you get from the sales to de-lever the business,

25:34 transform the performance.

25:35 I mean, it wasn't really that hard to come up with the strap lines.

25:39 The hard thing was

25:40 then to get on and do it.

25:42 But underlying it, the business was incredibly strong.

25:45 You could see that the UK, Ireland,

25:47 Canada business, we had really strong market positions,

25:49 and that if we could get rid of all the noise and expose those parts of

25:54 the business to the world, you could see that there was a real opportunity.

25:57 How could you see that?

25:58 How is it you had that clarity when none of these men did?

26:01 I think they did, but they weren't prepared to make the decision.

26:05 Because effectively, if you think about what we did,

26:07 we sold a third of the company.

26:09 If you have a bit of an ego,

26:11 it's like, oh, going to have to sell a third of the market cap of the company.

26:17 But we believed that if we did that,

26:19 that the actual valuation of the company would grow, so if you could expose

26:24 that part to the market, the wealth business,

26:27 the general insurance business, the health business,

26:29 you know,

26:30 we genuinely believed that that could create a much more successful company.

26:34 Got a line here from that period of time.

26:36 Crisis strips leadership down to essentials,

26:37 clarity, pace and empathy.

26:38 And I've got another

26:39 quote here.

26:40 It says you can't lead by consensus in a burning building.

26:42 No.

26:43 You can't.

26:43 You have to make the decisions, and then- I think PowerPoint slides are like

26:49 brilliant, and you see lots of people present all of these strategies.

26:52 And I just said to the team,

26:54 I'm not interested in the PowerPoint slides like, what are we going to do?

26:58 And what's really funny

26:59 is, I've actually got it in my office today,

27:02 my first appointment was for a chief of staff,

27:04 and I didn't know anybody really in the business.

27:07 I appointed a guy called Andrew,

27:09 he was my Chief of Staff, and we sat down in my office with a big,

27:12 big sheet of paper.

27:13 We said, what we're going to do in the first 12 months,

27:15 what we're going to do in the first two to three years,

27:17 and then what do we want to do after that?

27:20 Interestingly, in my four to five years, it had buy Direct Line, but,

27:24 you know, I'm not saying that I was any genius, but it did have that,

27:27 but in the first year,

27:29 it was just deliver, deliver, deliver, execute, sell, businesses,

27:33 improve performance.

27:33 You've got to do things.

27:35 You can't just talk about it.

27:37 We talked earlier on in this conversation about the fact that actually,

27:40 in the early part of your

27:41 career, you didn't actually feel that there was overt sexism against you.

27:45 It wasn't a big barrier

27:47 to your progression within the industry as well.

27:49 Then you get to this amazing role that I think you

27:53 felt there was a bit of destiny about,

27:55 Commercial Union to Aviva, and the AGM of 2022.

27:59 Now I got to

28:00 be really honest, Amanda,

28:01 I didn't even know the ins and outs of this as well, and I feel sorry

28:04 that I didn't,

28:05 because I should have done because it was a big story at the time.

28:08 Where basically a whole three, I think it was, investors,

28:12 got up and made a host of sexist comments at the AGM,

28:16 and you had to sit there and listen to this as well.

28:19 Do you want to talk me through?

28:20 Yeah.

28:21 So, if you think about an AGM, right.

28:23 An AGM, you're prepping for what could you

28:26 get asked about all the different financials,

28:28 the strategy, you know, the choices that you've made,

28:32 we had sold businesses by that point.

28:33 And so you get up on the stage,

28:36 and we were in the QEII in London,

28:38 you know, lots of security, obviously there always is

28:40 for AGMs.

28:41 So you walk onto the stage,

28:42 I deliver my first five minute, you know, this is what

28:46 we've done.

28:46 I'm actually quite proud at that point.

28:48 We've done a lot of really good stuff.

28:50 Yeah, we're two years down the road now from when you joined the company.

28:52 We're two years down the road, we've made a lot of progress.

28:54 Most of the businesses have been sold,

28:55 we'd de-levered.

28:56 I think we'd literally just announced the share consolidation and the big, big

29:01 return of capital.

29:02 So, I think shareholders should be happy, right?

29:04 This is good.

29:05 And then I sit

29:06 back on the stage, and my Chair is, George is sat next to me,

29:08 and I'm here and then the rest of the

29:10 board are on the stage, and the very,

29:13 very first question was from a shareholder that basically

29:16 said, it was good to see that there are some women on the board Mr.

29:20 Chair, because you know that, we

29:22 know that they're very good at the administrative tasks.

29:25 That was the first comment of the of the

29:27 AGM.

29:27 And then yeah,

29:29 you get somebody say that I wasn't the right man for the job, and about

29:35 wearing a skirt.

29:36 And you sort of think, oh hang on a second like,

29:40 this is, this is completely wrong,

29:43 but you're in the middle of the AGM.

29:45 And George, you know, at the end, as he was wrapping up,

29:49 he made the comment that, you know,

29:50 I really hope we don't get this sort of, these sort of comments,

29:52 but we walked off the stage, and we walked into the room.

29:55 And I was, you know, you're

29:57 all over the place in terms of,

29:59 like the meeting's done, and you know, you're thinking about that.

30:03 And I walk into the room and my whole team are there,

30:06 and they just went, that is not on.

30:08 What just happened to you is not on.

30:11 And I went, oh, I suppose not, because you start then dissecting it.

30:16 You yourself weren't furious at this point?

30:18 Well, at this point, you're in the middle of the AGM, Steve.

30:20 Too much going on.

30:21 There's so much else going on, and you're thinking

30:23 about all of the procedural bits of it, getting everything done.

30:27 Anyway, I was going to Canada that night, so I go straight to the airport.

30:30 I get on a

30:31 plane to go to Canada.

30:32 And as I'm on the plane, I'm thinking, no, that's not acceptable.

30:37 That's actually not acceptable.

30:38 Because, you know, maybe other people are experiencing the same thing.

30:42 So, I get LinkedIn out, you know, you're on a plane, it's a long plane journey,

30:46 and I start to write a LinkedIn article.

30:48 And as I landed, I sort of had this moment,

30:51 should I press post or not?

30:53 And I thought, I'm going to press post.

30:56 So I did press

30:57 post.

30:57 I mean literally, private comments,

31:01 public comments, men, women, particularly other women,

31:06 who had actually experienced exactly the same thing in the AGMs,

31:09 from exactly the same shareholders in some instances.

31:12 And you know, the post, even today, people will still

31:16 comment on the post occasionally today,

31:17 and they'll look at the post because you see,

31:19 Well, I read it today.

31:20 Yeah, so you'll see the post, and you'll see that people, you know,

31:24 and particularly what worried me was when I

31:26 was getting the private comments from people saying,

31:29 you know, Amanda, things are really this bad and this is what happened to me,

31:32 and I had literally

31:33 just taken the women in finance role,

31:36 you know, the champion role for the government.

31:38 So, I just thought, well,

31:40 if I'm not going to speak up about it, then who actually is?

31:43 And that's the point, as CEO, you have that responsibility you do.

31:46 You do.

31:47 Because, I mean, what you do?

31:48 Just say, quietly, oh, you know,

31:49 let's just forget about that.

31:51 Well, no, you know, I think it was the right time to say,

31:55 actually, do you know what, this is not acceptable.

31:58 By all means, criticize me if I'm doing a really bad job.

32:01 I have no problem with that.

32:02 You know, tell me that you don't agree with something that I've done,

32:05 a business, that I've sold,

32:06 a decision that I've taken, but not for being a woman.

32:10 I mean, that's just crazy.

32:12 And I can't believe that you're having to face this even at your incredible

32:16 stage of your career as well.

32:18 I mean, do you still have it now?

32:20 2025, 2026?

32:20 I mean, you still, I mean,

32:21 I've stopped reading any comments below the line on articles.

32:25 You know, I just do not.

32:27 But do you have it in your encounters with a lot of business people?

32:30 Do you still have moments

32:31 where you come out of a meeting and as I said to you,

32:33 my wife was saying, you know, I was telling

32:35 her about this, and she said, well, yeah, it's a thing,

32:37 and she's hearing about it a lot, and it's

32:39 like, and the line is,

32:40 "did the middle of my sentence interrupt the start of your sentence?"

32:43 Which is such a brilliant, which is so brilliant, very clever from your wife.

32:46 I can't take credit for that one, but I mean, it must happen all the time.

32:49 So I think, because obviously you have the position of, you're CEO and you know,

32:54 people do tend to listen to what you're saying,

32:56 you have it less so now, but I do observe it

32:59 with other, you do sometimes see it in other environments.

33:02 And I'll quite often take aside,

33:05 and it can be men or women, you know, but you see people's great ideas stolen,

33:08 or people not listened to because they're a bit different from other people,

33:11 and you just take them to one side and say,

33:13 that was a really good idea, like, go back in,

33:16 have another go.

33:16 You know, because it's your job, I think, to coach people through that.

33:21 One of the biggest decisions you've made since you were CEO of Aviva,

33:25 and it took the market by surprise,

33:27 and you've already alluded to it, and that was the very bold

33:30 deal that was announced just before Christmas

33:33 2024 which was closed in July 2025,

33:36 again, people said it couldn't be done so quickly,

33:39 and that was for Aviva to consolidate its huge UK

33:41 position and buy Direct Line.

33:43 That's a big decision.

33:44 You've enjoyed that one?

33:45 Yeah, no, it's been brilliant.

33:47 I mean, totally brilliant.

33:48 And if I think about that decision,

33:50 you know, we had, everybody always said,

33:52 as a CEO you've got to stand up and prove to

33:56 the market you're going to do what you're going to do quarter after quarter.

33:58 When we looked at

33:59 Direct Line,

34:00 and we obviously looked at other opportunities in the market at the same time,

34:03 we could see that they were not making traction with the market,

34:07 the share price wasn't moving,

34:08 and we could see that with our technology,

34:11 with our expertise, with our pricing ability,

34:14 that we could just make that a better business than it was.

34:19 So for us, it was okay,

34:21 we should go for this, and the board was just brilliant.

34:23 And you know, one of the people

34:25 that were so brilliant was my Chair,

34:27 George Culmer, you know, over the last six years,

34:30 and, you know, everybody said, Yeah, let's do it.

34:32 So, yeah, it was, it was 23rd of December,

34:35 2024 that we announced that deal.

34:37 You know, having only, it was only really four or five

34:40 weeks before, that we'd made the very first offer.

34:43 So we're very, very pleased with the deal and to

34:45 complete the deal within six months, you know,

34:48 again, massive effort by my CFO Charlotte Jones,

34:51 who's just phenomenal.

34:52 I mean, she's absolutely brilliant.

34:54 She said all the way along-

34:56 She's also a good runner as well.

34:56 She's a very good runner.

34:58 And she basically said, we will complete this by July,

35:00 and everybody was looking, of course we will.

35:03 And she was absolutely right, and she was determined

35:05 to do that, and that allowed us, obviously,

35:07 then to announce new targets, which is great.

35:10 Tell me what's going through your head.

35:11 You've decided to go for this.

35:13 The market, the world doesn't know about it yet.

35:15 Is that very exciting?

35:16 It's very exciting, but in a way,

35:18 it's also nerve-wracking, because you're like, you know,

35:21 lots of deals get leaked, and you know this,

35:23 because at that point you've got various different

35:26 people that are in the know, not that many,

35:28 but, you know, you just never know, do you?

35:30 And so you always,

35:31 you want to be the one to sort of make the decision and to push it forward.

35:36 And we, I think, you know, we were largely,

35:39 and it was, he was hugely exciting, but for the business,

35:43 right?

35:43 If you think about this business that had been through so much,

35:47 to be on the front foot,

35:49 not on the back foot.

35:50 And if I think about Aviva, you know, we've gotten that 92% employee

35:55 engagement score.

35:56 I just think that that is because the team are like, come on, bring it on.

36:01 Well, I'll just mention that you said earlier on when you took over the company,

36:04 the shares were around about 273 pence, last time I had a look,

36:07 and I'm probably a day or so late, I think about

36:09 650 pence now,

36:10 so you've had a phenomenal success on the share price during your tenure as well

36:14 And we've sold a third of the business, right.

36:16 Which just shows the strategy works.

36:18 I know a lot of your team, and I like a lot of your team,

36:21 and I get on really, really well with them as well.

36:24 The fact that you work with good

36:25 people who have got your back and you've got their back,

36:28 is that the most important thing?

36:30 I mean totally because, I mean, at the end of the day, you're one person.

36:34 I mean, you know,

36:36 people say they call me relentless or whatever.

36:37 I mean, I am relentless, but at the end of the day,

36:40 you can only do so much.

36:42 You have to have the best people around you.

36:44 If you've got the best people around you,

36:46 then you know that they will recruit the best people around them,

36:49 and that they will recruit the best people around them.

36:51 So then what happens is you

36:53 end up having a brilliant organization with people that are really motivated,

36:57 and culture is really important to that,

37:00 calling out bad behavior, rewarding good behavior,

37:03 making sure that the performance is really high.

37:05 We're delivering for our,

37:07 you know, for our shareholders, for our customers, that's what we're here for.

37:09 Dame Amanda Blanc, I said to you, and I meant it, you were the first person who

37:13 was on my list.

37:14 I finally got you.

37:15 So, thank you.

37:16 Thank you very much indeed for joining me.

37:19 Thank you.

37:20 I make no bones about it.

37:21 When I pitched CNBC for Executive Decisions over a year and a half

37:25 ago it was CEO’s like Amanda Blanc I had in mind,

37:29 and twenty odd episodes down the line,

37:32 we finally got to sit down on Executive Decisions.

37:36 She’s a brilliant CEO who came into a sleeping giant.

37:40 Aviva was a behemoth

37:42 in the British finance industry,

37:44 but it had underdelivered under three successive CEOs.

37:47 Amanda came in, she wasn't afraid to cut away the fat, made tough decisions,

37:52 build up the business– buying Direct Line was

37:55 a great case in point and really turn

37:57 around the fortunes for the company, its employees and the shareholders

38:01 as well.

38:02 She's also used her position to be a brave CEO, facing down overt, lazy,

38:09 direct sexism most notably at one of the first AGMs

38:12 she held when she was the leader as well.

38:15 She's a brilliant leader, she’s a smart leader but

38:18 she’s also very empathetic and fun person.

38:20 I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to Amanda Blanc.

38:23 Thank you very much indeed for joining me

38:25 on the show we call Executive Decisions.

38:27 I would love to hear your feedback,

38:29 please drop your thoughts in the comments or a review,

38:32 and please hit that follow or subscribe button.

38:35 On the next episode I'll be speaking to the former CEO of Goldman Sachs,

38:40 Lloyd Blankfein.

38:40 “Somebody put his hand on my shoulder and said,

38:42 ‘Lloyd you may think you're changing but everybody knows exactly who you

38:45 are’.

38:45 So I decided I might as well go with it because I'm not fooling anybody anyway.”

38:49 I’m looking forward to it.

38:52 See you then.