Aviva TV ad falls foul of UK’s Advertising Standards Authority

Aviva has fallen foul of the
UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which has banned a
television advertisement promoting the insurer’s annuity products
following complaints from four viewers. The ad was aired in the UK
during last summer.

According to the ASA, in its
ad Aviva claimed that its annuity products offered up to 20% more
income than those of its competitors. The ASA said that Aviva, in
defending its ad, provided a data spreadsheet compiled by
retirement specialist firm Directly Financial.

The ASA said that the
spreadsheet showed the rates Aviva offered alongside that of nine
of their competitors, in 72 annuity scenarios, and the percentage
by which Aviva’s rate was different from those of their
competitors.

“We noted that amounted to
648 comparisons overall and we also noted Aviva’s argument that the
data showed their annuity rate was greater than their competitors,
by 20% or more, in 22% of cases (or 145 comparisons),” stated the
ASA.

The ASA continued: “Aviva
believed that the degree to which they offered a better annuity
rate than their open market competitors was sufficiently high to
justify the claim in the ad without reference to providers in the
non open-market,” noted the ASA in its ruling.

“Notwithstanding that, we
also noted that the vast majority of comparisons where Aviva
offered a rate at least 20% better than their competitors related
to quotes from three of the nine open market competitors only, and
we also understood from the market share data supplied by Aviva
that those three companies in turn made up only six% of all
open-market providers,” the ASA stated.

The ASA added that it had
also noted that, when compared with the remaining six open market
competitors, Aviva offered an annuity rate that was at least 20%
better than that offered by those other companies in only 3% of
cases.

In addition, the ASA pointed
out that Directly Financial’s data excluded non open-market
annuities which account for about 45% of the annuity
market.

“We noted that, because non
open-market annuity rates were not published, Aviva had made the
assumption that those rates would always be less competitive than
those on the open market,” stated the ASA.

Summing-up its findings, the ASA said: “Because we
considered that we had not seen evidence that demonstrated that
Aviva could get consumers up to 20% more annuity income than other
providers, we concluded that the claim was mis-leading.”

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