Leadership Insights: Matt Washington on GCS Vision for 2026

Mark Colegate: With his outlook for the first half of 2026, I'm joined here in the studio by Matthew Washington. He is Managing Director, Global Corporate and Specialty at Aviva and CEO at Probitas. Well Matt, great to have you with us. As an opening question: have you got two jobs at the moment or one?

Matt Washington: Pleasure to be here, Mark. So fortunately it really is one role now. We spent the last few months really actively bringing the two businesses together. So we've got a really exciting time ahead of us, particularly as we go into the opportunities within 2026. But we've been very busy over the last sort of three to five months working at bringing a single leadership team together. So we now have single underwriting directors responsible for each of our key product lines. And importantly, it's there to maximise the opportunity for all of our customers and what we're agnostic about, whether that is on the company platform or on the Lloyd's platform, it's got single leadership.

Mark Colegate: But beneath that level of the executive team, what have been the key areas of focus to make sure the business is set fair for 2026 and beyond? 

Matt Washington: Absolutely. So the critical area that we've been investing in is our ability to lead, giving that lead proposition out to our customers. And we've achieved that in a number of ways. So firstly, our lead multinational capability. This is really unlocking our business to support customers who have assets and interest in territories outside of the UK. Allied to that is our captive proposition. So we're able to support customers with complex captive management needs. Equally, we're supporting our customers through investment in our global ARMS capability. ARMS is Aviva's risk engineering proposition. So to be able to offer a global solution through our bases in the UK, Canada and Ireland, but under one single wrapper is really important for those customers in particular. And finally, and importantly, it's a single face to market. So whether we're offering now a proposition on the Lloyd's platform or on the company platform, a single face to market utilising Lloyd's global licenses is gonna be a real differentiator for Aviva.

Mark Colegate: Well, you mentioned 2026. As you're out and about talking to clients and potential clients, what do they see as the major issues that are gonna be facing them? And what have you got in the toolkit to help with?

Matt Washington: Certainly. So clearly a lot of businesses out there are looking at the global challenges and there are a number of them out there. There are a lot of global uncertainties, not necessarily right now from the economy, but I think from some of the threats out there, we've recently launched political violence and terrorism, for example, and we've got that on both the company and the syndicate platform. In turn, we've got a number of other sort of crisis-orientated products around things like contingency, which is certainly as we've seen as events and sporting events have bounced back quite significantly since Covid, there's an increased demand for each of those. But importantly, as our customers, that their demands are changing and many of our, even our UK customers, have got multinational needs for the product. So they've got operations throughout the globe. So we're able to now, through our lead multinational proposition, really support those customers in any of those territories that they're operating in. And particularly for those more complex ones that maybe have non-standard aggregates, such as they're running their own captives, we're able to support those customers as well.

Mark Colegate: What sort of feedback are you getting from your client base on the outlook for the US economy? How does that affect your proposition?

Matt Washington: Yeah, we're certainly seeing there is some buoyancy in the US economy. Our clients in the construction sector, in particular, have really had an incredibly busy 12 months. The demand for the product is growing, and it's great to be able to support our customers in that proposition. And we feel that we're probably one of the few insurers that have that one-stop shop where we can offer customers both a construction proposition leading into latent defects and then on into an operating real estate policy when that building is complete.

Mark Colegate: And where are you when it comes to things like insuring the power sector and energy sector? Because I know you pulled out of conventional power a few years ago. That seems to be a sector that's, you know, the political wind seems to have shifted, let's put it that way.

Matt Washington: Indeed, so Aviva as a whole, we withdrew from conventional power, Jan, in 2019. We really have thrown our weight behind building out the green asset schedule. We see ourselves as one of the lead markets within the renewable energy space. Right now, we specialise in leading off on and offshore wind propositions. Last year, we invested further in our lead proposition for offshore wind, doubling our gross line available to £150 million as a max line. And we think that that gives us real credibility with our brokers and our customers. So whilst the conventional power element is not our target segment, there are still some conventional elements within that. So we will support portfolios, for example, that are using gas powered turbines to enable them to manage the peak of energy demand. And so where they're, particularly where they're a smaller part of the portfolio.

Mark Colegate: You certainly sound very ambitious in the kind of key business lines that you're playing in. But is there a danger that you buy business? You get it at the wrong price because that looks really attractive in the short term.

Matt Washington: Well, look, that's always a challenge of how do you appropriately price throughout the cycle? And again, we feel that's an area we've spent quite a lot of time on. Certainly over the last three years, really investing in how we look and price our business. We have a number of partnerships with third parties to get some of the most sophisticated pricing software we have out there. But importantly, what we see as critical is how do we support a customer through the cycle? We're not here to sort of dip in and out and leave customers high and dry. This is about ensuring that our products are appropriately priced throughout the cycle. Our breadth of coverage is useful not just for today, but for what our customers are looking from us in throughout 26 and beyond. So we want to be able to say to all of our customers and our brokers that if we're in that territory, if we're in that product, we're in it for the long haul. This is not a flash in the pan.

Mark Colegate: And what would you say if a broker came to you and said, "I completely agree, that's the best way to run things. That's how we're trying to run our business. So if you could give a bit more remuneration to us, we can grow our business more effectively and that's going to help you too".

Matt Washington: It's interesting. So there's always demand for additional remuneration. Everyone's costs have gone up over the last three years, in particular, as inflation has driven that into our wage roll. We do partner, we have a number of strategic arrangements with our key broking partners. Obviously, it is important that our brokers are being fairly remunerated. We make it very clear, we also expect all of that to be clearly disclosed to their customers when that's happening. And look, and we are willing to partner with brokers at the right level as long as we feel that both Aviva and our customers are getting value from that remuneration. Then we are open to sort of bespoke deals as they may arise.

Mark Colegate: Implicit in a lot of what you're saying, I think, is about building in-house expertise, robustness, resilience. But if I look at the broader insurance market, there's a lot of emphasis now on MGA's delegated authority. Where do you as a business sit in that space? So are you pro MGA's, do you want to do it all yourself?

Matt Washington: So I think MGA's do have a valuable role to play in the global insurance ecosystem. One thing I would say, Mark, is not all MGA's are born equal. And I think we do have a number of strategic partnerships with MGA's where they have a clear route to market, whether that's a distribution channel, that might be a digital offering, that might be local expertise, language expertise, that we don't have access to in-house. Where we're able to see there's that differentiation from our own proposition that we can partner with, again, over the long term, we're very, very willing to do so. So we tend to build our relationships, few of them, but deep and meaningful. So very much active in that space. For example, in the US Mid-Market property space, we have a handful of relationships there. And again, that's accessing that, that smaller, lower-cat exposed Mid-Market US business that we can't underwrite directly ourselves, because we don't have boots on the ground presence in the US. So that's just one example where we see that being a meaningful relationship. So very much active in that space, continuing to build out those relationships. But again, it has to be with those MGA's that have, we like ones that have skin in the game. They're not just writing for sort of top-line growth, but have value that they can add to the overall ecosystem.

Mark Colegate: And finally, you've talked about the importance of one organisation, one structure, one platform, but you've still got two brands. So when are you gonna get down to a single brand in 2026?

Matt Washington: Yeah, really good question. So we're very committed to moving to a single brand. We're very passionate about the overall Aviva brand. And we see real strength in being able to have that above both the company and the syndicate platform. It's quite a complex area, particularly on the syndicate. We have a number of businesses that are based overseas. We need to make sure that trademarks and all of the legal aspects are worked through. But we're fully committed as are the boards of the businesses to move to a single Aviva brand. We're in that discovery process at the moment and we'll be looking to align behind a single Aviva brand in the first half of next year. So brokers can see that come through Q1, Q2 of 2026.

Mark Colegate: Matt Washington. Thank you.

Matt Washington: Thank you.