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

0:00A CNBC original podcast. At one of the highest points in her career, Amanda Blanc made a decision that most executives would never make. She walked away. If something is making you unhappy, why would you do it? You need to move on. She left one of the biggest jobs in global insurance with nothing lined up, no safety net. When you leave an organisation, it's like it's brutal. You're gone. I mean, that's it. You said you're going to go. Your emails are off. Everything's off. Were you scared? I don't know if it was scared, worried, yeah. That instinct to trust herself and act has shaped how she makes decisions ever since.

0:37And when she later took over Aviva in the middle of a crisis, she brought that same approach with her, making tough calls, simplifying the business and acting fast. You've got to do things. You can't just talk about it. At her first annual meeting as CEO, she was subjected to sexist comments from shareholders in front of a live audience. The next day, she responded publicly, writing about it on LinkedIn. The post went viral, sparking a wider conversation about how female business leaders still face misogyny at work. Criticise me if I'm doing a really bad job. I have no problem with that. But not for being a woman.

1:13I mean, that's just crazy. These are Amanda Blank's executive decisions.

1:24you are one of the major reasons why i pitched cnbc for executive decisions i think you are an inspirational character and i'm very proud to call you a friend and acquaintance as well so thank you for that you're very welcome what a build-up let's start off at the beginning the value i go straight to the fact that um the coal mining communities throughout the country were really suffering in the 1980s. And I just kind of wonder if you can encapsulate the kind of upbringing you had as well. I think about my childhood, I think about it as, you know, living, basically every house was like right next to each other, literally rows and rows of houses going up the valleys.

2:01Some houses had toilets, some houses didn't. Loads and loads of community work, lots and lots of chapel work. I mean, I used to go to chapel like twice on a Sunday. It was all about performance, music everywhere, and a real feeling of belonging. You know, you'd walk down the street and everybody knew you, everybody knew your business. But in a way, you didn't mind that. It was just really lovely. The valleys were built around these sort of, you know, tens of coal mines that were built in the sort of 1800s, 1900s and became, you know, really the wealth of Wales. Both my grandparents, grandfathers were minors, you know, both being down the mine from the age of 14.

2:46I mean, can you even imagine that going down and sort of like underground when his father carried him home on the first day? And like you cannot imagine. And both all of my grandparents were all of 10, 12, 14 children, of which only probably six or seven survived. So the women were just basically having children every year almost of their childbearing lives. but honestly like so happy so loving um and just just really wonderful and so musical was it a yamaha that your parents bought your piano that glistened yes in your most important room in the house as well and the best room it was called the best room and it went in the best room and the only time you went in the best room was to practice the piano or at christmas and that was it like you didn't go in the restroom otherwise and I can remember this piano it did not have a mark on it and even to today that piano does not have a mark on it you know it was like perfect and I used to practice this piano you know and but my mum and dad had worked so hard for that my mum had three four jobs you know she would go out in the evening to work there was a factory uh where she would she would basically peel the rubber off these rubber rings that were then made into ashtrays And my dad was a chemical engineer, which he qualified in the evening school.

4:04And he would travel all over the UK selling chemicals to water treatment companies. You could have easily been a professional musician as well. Grade 8 clarinet, I know that, and grade 8 piano as well. Did you tell yourself as a young woman growing up that you were going to be a musician? Oh no, look, I believe that's what I was going to be, for sure. I mean, you know, it was like I was in the amateur dramatics. I honestly, like in chapel, I was doing the solo, playing the piano, reading the recitation. It was like, you know, everybody else out of the way. Here I am. I love doing this stuff. But I was not good enough to do that.

4:41I was not. I mean, look, I got to grade eight through hard work. I got in both piano and clarinet. But ultimately, when I went for my interviews for university and you sort of saw these other people and you were like, okay, right, you're not good enough to do this. And, you know, one of my great strengths, I think, is that I am able to work out like when I'm going to be really good at something and when I'm not. But even at that moment, you didn't have a passion for, I want to do this, I want to work in insurance, I want to do something else. I mean, look, I mean, if I think about the school I went to, Triorkee Comprehensive School, right?

5:15I mean, it was, look, it was not a great school right there was no money and so you know school didn't talk about business the most aspirational thing that somebody in school would want to be was like a solicitor or an accountant or a teacher and that was really aspirational it was like oh did you know x wants to be this you know i didn't even think about that so nobody nobody knew about business i mean you know you didn't think about it make the decision very early on to get out of wales and i say get out i mean get out for your career and I mean I've seen it written a couple of times you had two career options yeah as I see it you could have gone work for mid Glamorgan County Council yeah or you could leave Wales where you had all your comfort zone and go off to Luton with a graduate training job at Commercial Union which obviously later became part of Aviva which is an extraordinary journey as well um why did you choose the latter because that is a really big early decision for a young woman to me yeah no it is I mean so I was I was sort of 21 and I finished university in Liverpool and I did not have a scooby-doo so it was like I need to apply for some jobs I saw this job for commercial union graduate trainee I thought okay what's insurance whatever I'll apply to that and then I had this job in Midlamorgan County Council and I thought this is fantastic I can stay at home I can live with my mum and dad and you know I can keep all my friends that I that I've got or I can go to Luton and be a graduate trainee for commercial union and I don't know what it was, but I just thought, if I don't go now, I'm never going to go.

6:50So I did. And, you know, I can remember my mum and dad dropping me off in a bed and breakfast in the middle of Luton. And it was about eight o 'clock on a Sunday night. It had taken us like a hundred hours to get there. I'd never been to Luton and thinking, oh, this is a big decision I've just made. You know, as you're waving them off, going, see you later. Did they help you make the decision? No, no, they didn't. Because they were really, my mum and dad were really phenomenal at just saying, you need to make the decision. You know, they wanted me to do what was right for me. You say, I didn't have a Scooby-Doo.

7:21But actually you thought, no, I'm going to build this career. I don't have a predestiny. I definitely didn't feel like I had a predestiny, even at that point. I think what I did was, and this is the way I've approached everything, is like you turn up and you think, I'm going to just do my best. I'm going to do my best. I'm going to see how this all pans out. And the brilliant thing about the program was you had two years of basically just going around every single department in commercial union. So you got to see the whole business. And it was phenomenal. And they were investing time in me as an individual.

7:51And the other thing they insisted was you had to do your professional exams. And if you didn't pass your professional exams every six months, you were kicked off the program. Wow. So there's a lot of pressure on you at an early age. There was pressure, but I liked that. And do you still like the pressure? Yes. Obviously, because you're a CEO. I like the pressure. I like the deadline. I like the knowing you've got to work hard to do something. And so that was really brilliant. And so there was no calling. It was just you got into it. And then I realized I really loved underwriting. And then I thought I'd become an underwriter.

8:21And then I was a good underwriter. And I thought, actually, I really quite like to do sales. And then the opportunity was there to do sales. So it was just opened up all of these other opportunities. You remind me a lot of the conversation I had with Julia Hoggett about the sexism that was in the financial services. She was in investment banking, you were in insurance in the 1990s. And I remember saying to Julia, I was in the 1990s as well. And I was on the other side of it as well. I was on the male side of the patriarchy. I was on the male side of that sexism. It was a very tough place to be in financial services in the 90s, in the noughties, and perhaps to a certain degree still is now.

8:54How did that manifest itself in your career early on as well? So I would say in my early career, no. It really, interestingly, in the 90s, I think that it really was a meritocracy at commercial union. If you were the best person for the job, you got the job. And there were lots of different opportunities to do different things. I think that what you're referring to came much later through the 2000s, 2010s, where I would be more exposed to conferences, events, where there would be this dynamic going on. Then I think you did experience it there for sure. insurance has been I think a very similar culture to what I grew up in in the 90s well and it's a very drinky male dominated environment as well but you're saying you just didn't experience that so I'm not saying I didn't experience I didn't feel intimidated by it and I didn't feel that I was negatively impacted by it I mean you can't not experience it Steve because I think you know you only have to even walk through Leidenor today you know it's not somewhere I would want to walk through on a Thursday evening, for example, even today.

10:00They love lunch at London and you don't do that. No, I don't drink. I don't do lunch. And I do think that, and I've never really done a lot of dinners because, you know, when you have children, I want to go home and see my children at night. So I never really did that. But I saw so many women that did and got themselves into difficult situations, you know, when they were drinking and some of these conferences and things like that. and I would always say to my team and I always had a good proportion of men and women in my team when we'd go to conferences, I'd say, you're here to work. Just be really, really clear about that.

10:36Don't drink. Don't drink. You can drink at home. You can drink at other times, but we're here to work. Don't get yourself into a difficult situation. But the men can. The men can go up and drink. So straight away, it's a different set of rules. Even then, even though you didn't experience sexism so much in the 90s and the early noughties, it's still a different set of rules for women. That's pretty frustrating. Well, it is, but I would always say that to the boys as well. I wouldn't just say it to the girls. I would say, you know, to my whole, when I was at AXA, you know, which is a lot of this time, I would say to the team, right, we're going to work.

11:09The reason we have these conferences, that we pay money to sponsor these conferences, is that this is meant to build business opportunities. So let's be very clear. That's what we're there for. Today, when Aviva has those conferences, is we send security people to the conferences as well to just make sure that our teams are okay. You shouldn't have to do that, but that's what you do because we do not want to put any of our team in a difficult situation. And as sad as that is, that is the situation that we operate in.

11:42Tell me about some of the toughest decisions during those periods. Can you remember a time when you made a really bad decision and how you react to making bad decisions? So I think that the good thing about being a CEO and being in a leadership is you're going to make lots and lots of bad decisions, right? But you always got to think, okay, how do I turn that into a good decision? I was convinced that at the end of 1997 that I wanted to be a management consultant. So it was like, I'm going to go and work for a management consultancy. You're 30 years old at this stage. So I'm not very old, right?

12:17Other people had said, are you really sure that that's what you want to do? anyway I get to do this job I mean like literally a month in and I'm thinking what am I doing oh my gosh this is like a massive mistake I should not have done this um but the good thing about I think me and my decisions is I realize quickly when I've made a mistake and you know okay you've got to give it a chance because in a month you don't know but after six months I knew and it was like okay I need to move on from here I need to do go back in to something that I love which is leading people Why do you love insurance?

12:48I love insurance because I think it's really purposeful. If I think about, you know, I'll give you an example. One of my very, very good friends, her husband very, very suddenly died 16 months ago. And she had a life insurance policy with Aviva. I didn't know that. And she didn't tell me that. And then as she was going through the grieving and the process of trying to sort out all her husband's affairs, she and I spoke and she said, your team are just amazing. I said, why? She said, well, when I rang them and told them that, you know, that my husband had died and I had these two young daughters, you know, eight and nine years old.

13:32Yes, they dealt with my claim, but they sent me these two beautiful teddy bears that had the daughter's names embroidered on the ear of the teddy bear. In that moment of deep, deep grief, those children got some sort of relief from those teddy bears. Nobody told the Aviva team to do that. Nobody. They just did it. And I think that that, looking after people where they're in their most difficult time, you know, they've had a critical illness. They've had somebody that's passed away. They're not very well. They need looking after. They need somebody to guide them through that. I just think insurance is so purposeful.

14:10How many other businesses can you say can do something like that? Is that something that you have instilled in them or is it just them good people who happen to be working there? It is the DNA of the organization. And that's why Aviva, I think, is so special because that's how our people think about looking after customers. It's just knowing that people are at their most vulnerable and thinking how you can, in some small way, make it just slightly better for them and of course we do things wrong and inevitably you get things wrong but I would say on the whole what we desperately try to do is do the right thing for you know the people that trust us that you they trust you right that you're going to be there when something bad happens it's not a handbag or a pair of shoes it's a promise to pay and that's why I think insurance is unlike any other industry that explains a lot of why you love working in the industry for so long.

15:06You haven't always loved your career decisions. And perhaps one, I want to just go into a little bit more detail, something you haven't revealed a lot of information about previously. You went to Zurich. You went to Zurich in 2018, the CEO there, Mario Greco, and you left pretty much a year later as well. In fact, resigned after eight months, I've got written down here. You were the CEO for EMEA. It was a really big role. Why did you make that decision to join and to leave? So to join, I had been at AXA since 2011. I'd done the job for seven, eight years. The business had turned around. I've always said I'm sort of not a business as usual leader.

15:42I sort of like a challenge. I like to be able to do something different. And I couldn't see that I was going to get that opportunity at AXA. So, you know, the opportunity came to me to go to Zurich to do this job as the CEO of EMEA. And hey, look, it looked like an amazing job. Zurich is a brilliant company. And then I thought, this is a really good opportunity. Okay. So, you know, what could possibly go wrong? This was going to be great. But I think I have to do something that is meaningful. I have to do something where I feel that I've got authority to make decisions and that I can make a difference.

16:19And the role really was a spam breaker role, as much as it was like, you know, not presented in that way. And that was not going to ever work for me. And as much as I tried to make that work, ultimately not being able to have the authority to make changes, to make decisions, that cultural fit, it just didn't work. And that's the word I was going to come to next, cultural. Again, Zurich is a great company, Mario Greco is a great CEO, but you've already showed us what kind of culture you have tried to create and what you applaud at Aviva. Was it the wrong culture for you? For me, it was. Absolutely.

16:53And I think that, you know, I do really think that you're at work a lot of the time. You know, I'm in at sort of 7.30 in the morning. I don't leave till sort of 7.30 or later at night. So you have to be really happy doing what you're doing. If something is making you unhappy, then why would you do it? You know, you need to move on and you need to say, I made a bad call here. But let me get this right. You've got your two wonderful daughters. You've got Ken, your wonderful husband, who's looking after the girls for you as well. You have quit Zurich without another job to go to. That's exactly right.

17:28Did you feel at one point, this could be a very big mistake? Oh, yeah. I mean, of course. Like, you make the decision. And, you know, Ken and I obviously talked about that a lot. But he said to me, you know, you're unhappy. Like, this is not for you. you're not able to do what you do which is affect change and make a difference and you know do all of those those wonderful things so you've got to back yourself so I came home on the plane from I was actually in Germany I came home from Germany and landed in in Heathrow and thought okay well what does that mean because you know when you leave an organization it's like it's brutal it's gone like I mean that's it you've said you're gonna go your emails are off everything's off you land, you know, you get in the car, you drive back from Heathrow to Hampshire, which is not a very long journey.

18:17No. You know, you pull up at home and you go, okay, right. Were you scared? I don't know if it was scared, worried, yeah. I mean, you know, like I've got two daughters, you know. I mean, you're at your peak of your career in your early 40s. No, no, absolutely. No, absolutely. I do not deny any of that. I rang my dad that night and I told him and he said, are you happier now? I said, I am. He said, and you've made the right decision. Yeah. nobody ever said like you know stick it out stick it out because I just don't see the point of that if if you know that it's not right and I did know you say your parents or your father but Ken obviously spoiled you and told you you know this isn't working for you as well you two strike me as a fantastic couple as well and Ken made the decision probably about 15 16 17 years earlier when you had your second daughter, Rhiannon, to give up his career.

19:08Now, lots of people give up their careers, but more often than not it's the woman who's historically had to give up the career for the man. That is amazing. And he had a very successful career. He did. He was in the same business you were in as well. Why did you both make that decision? Yeah, he's a physics graduate. He's got an MBA. He's a chartered insurer. Absolutely. But when we had the discussion, actually, it was when Rhiannon, I was pregnant with Rhiannon. and I had this job offer to go to Towergate. And, you know, so we would have been sort of, yes. And I had the contract for Towergate in one hand and the pregnancy test in the other.

19:47And I was like, okay, this is going to be tricky. I don't quite know what to do here. Do I sign this contract or not? And I rang what was going to be my future boss at Towergate and I said, look, I can't come. I can't come. I'm pregnant. And he said, well, have you been pregnant before? I went, yes. He said, well, you know what it's like then? I said, I do. He said, well, you're coming. Ken, don't be silly. You know, it's fine. And Ken and I had that conversation and Ken said, you know, okay, this will only work really if one of us stays at home. And I'm happy to do that because I think that you can do really well in this role and I'm happy to support you.

20:24But we had a deal. And the deal was that, you know, I would talk about work at home, that I wouldn't come home and do this, which I think a lot of people do, and say, okay, that's work. Now I'm home and I don't want to talk about it. You're a partnership. You want to do it together. It was a partnership. So it was interesting, you know, you were saying that you were talking about what you do with your wife. Yeah, yeah. She's giving me one of the questions for you in a moment. And she's giving you one of the questions for me. And that's how, you know, so yesterday, Ken and I went on a walk. And he feels like he knows you because obviously he watches you every morning as well.

20:59and we did the whole, okay, so what could come up in the podcast? What are you going to talk about? And I think that's a really lovely way of doing it because it means that we're treating each other as grown-ups. And it also still means that I still get the silly calls from my daughters which basically say, you know, where have you put this and all of that? I'm like, isn't your dad there? But do you resent the fact that I'm even asking you about you having the career and your husband giving up his career? because that isn't the norm still. We're in the third decade of the 21st century and it's still the case.

21:34No, I don't resent you asking it at all. And I think it was good to actually talk about it because I also think sometimes there can be this myth that you can have it all, right? That as families, you can have it all. You can't. You have to make compromises. You have to make decisions. And so I think you have to be realistic because there's all this, you know, well, she must've had six nannies and, you know, she must've had this and her husband must do this. It's not like that. In the real world, you have to have tough conversations and you have to make decisions, and particularly about how do you want your family brought up and what do you want the home environment to be.

22:11And whilst I totally respect that other people have made other decisions, we made that decision for what we believed was the right thing to do for our children. I know you pride yourself on how you help women in the workplace have careers and their personal life as well, But you personally, I know at least one of your maternity leaves, it was way too short, wasn't it? Oh, my gosh, yeah. Six, seven weeks, I think, wasn't it? Yeah, crazy. And it was this one where I had the pregnancy test and the water. Because, of course, that I felt. Because one thing you cannot stop yourself feeling is guilt.

22:40You know, so the whole time. So if you're at work, you feel guilty that you're not at home. If you're at home, you feel guilty you're not at work. Feeling the hairdresser, you feel guilty you're not at home or at work. You know, there's this constant thing going on. So I felt really guilty. I felt, you know, I've taken on this big job, CEO of this big, massive, consolidating broking business that was doing a deal almost every week at that point. And I felt, you know, I needed to go back to work. But would I recommend that to other people? I really would not. I mean, Ken will tell you the story of, you know, the day that I went into labor with my first daughter.

23:14I was literally on the phone to somebody basically doing a performance appraisal. And he was like, you know, Amanda, come on. like we need to go. Amanda if your team and I know it's crazy I mean I'm not I'm not I'm ashamed of that by the way. I know I'm ashamed of that I'm ashamed of that I am ashamed of that.

23:36I'm going to talk to you now about the biggest job you've ever had the CEO job of Aviva came up and you took it in the middle of 2020. Tell me about that. So I was on the board as a non-executive And the CEO stepped down. There was a new chair and the CEO job was available. And I'm there thinking, oh my gosh, like this is a job for me. I mean, I knew it because this was a company I'd started my career in. This is a company I had loved. This was the company I had competed against for the whole of my career. And I'm sitting there going, if only I wasn't the non-executive, of, you know, maybe I could throw my hat in the ring to be the CEO.

24:16And I said that to the chair. And he said, well, why don't you throw your hat in to be the CEO? And so I did. And I got the job. And, you know, so July the 6th, 2020, I became the CEO of Aviva. You know, a terrifying moment in terms of like what needed to be done. But the proudest moment in my whole career that I end up back where I started. So you've taken on a company that's underperforming, dividend cuts, bad capital markets, too many operations that aren't working, and it's COVID. I know, it's brilliant, isn't it? How about that for a job? What could be better? No, absolutely, all of the above.

24:53So, you know, first of all, yeah, how do you lead a business during COVID? Was me, the CFO, one other, all sort of, you know, practicing the sort of the distancing and all of that. The share price, the minute I walked in the door was£2.73. We had this sprawling empire in Europe, which every time there was a bad surprise for Aviva, it came from that. So it was a case of, okay, what do you do? And I had four weeks before I had to stand up in front of the market and do the half year results. So we said, okay, well, let's keep this really simple. Three things. Focus the portfolio. Okay. Sell the stuff that we don't believe we can win in those markets.

25:31De-lever the business. Create financial strength. The business was too highly levered. Use the money you get from the sales to deliver the business. Transform the performance. I mean, it wasn't really that hard to come up with the strap lines. The hard thing was then to get on and do it. But underlying it, the business was incredibly strong. You could see that the UK, Ireland, Canada business, we had really strong market positions. And that if we could get rid of all the noise and expose those parts of the business to the world, you could see that there was a real opportunity. How could you see that?