Aviva is one of the best known insurance companies in the UK. Does its ethics live up to its reputation?
Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.
Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with Aviva, including investments in arms manufacturers that produce weapons that Israel uses on Palestine, financing of oil and gas companies, and likely use of tax avoidance strategies.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Aviva’s overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
Hundreds of European companies are providing financing to corporations involved in illegal Israeli settlements and other activities, including war crimes, by the Israeli state in occupied Palestine.
The Don’t Buy into Occupation report, created by Palestinian and European civil society groups, identifies these financial institutions. It looks at the financing of everything from arms and munitions to tech platforms used by the Israeli military.
In its 2025 report, it found that over 1,000 banks, asset managers, insurance companies and pension funds were providing financing to 104 businesses implicated in illegal Israeli activities. Aviva was the 22nd largest investor found, and was holding over $14.5 billion in shareholdings and bondholdings in these companies as of August 2025.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese wrote in the foreword to the report, “Where banks and investors provide capital, credit or underwriting to enterprises implicated in international crimes, they risk potential legal responsibility for aiding and abetting serious breaches of international law.”
Aviva responded to the report, stating “we invest and conduct business in accordance with the UK legal framework and our own baseline exclusion policies .... Both of these permit investment / underwriting in Israel or with Israeli businesses.” It added “we have no direct operations in Israel.”
In March 2025, a report was also published by the campaign group Boycott Bloody Insurance, which looked specifically at the insurance industry’s role in financing weapons companies supplying Israel since October 2023. Aviva was found to be far the largest investor — accounting for more than half of total investments for the insurance companies examined.
This included $345 million in investments in BAE Systems, a British arms company selling multiple weapons to Israel, including the M109 howitzer. According to the report, documented evidence suggests that the Israeli military has used the howitzer to fire white phosphorus over Gaza — a substance that can severely burn people and set fire to structures, fields, and other civilian objects.
Boycott Bloody Insurance called for a boycott of Aviva and other companies involved.
“Insurers underwrite weapons, detention centres, and fossil fuels, causing environmental destruction, human rights abuses and genocide,” Andrew Taylor, from the campaign group, said. “Deadly insurers profit from our local councils, churches, charities and schools. We need to hurt insurers’ bottom line to force them to stop cashing in on death and suffering.”
Aviva did not appear to have responded to the report.
Aviva was taking very limited action to address its climate impacts.
The company has a policy excluding investments in some of the most polluting forms of fossil fuels, such as thermal coal, arctic oil and oil sands. However, the policy stated that it provided exceptions for companies with approved climate targets.
It appears that Aviva continues to have investments in coal companies: the Aviva Investors 2025 Proxy Voting Report said it held investments in Shaanxi Coal Industry Ltd and Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal Co Ltd. It did not prohibit the financing of oil and gas.
Aviva had set an emissions reduction target in line with international climate goals. However, given that it was still financing fossil fuels including coal, it scored extremely poorly in Ethical Consumer’s climate change category.
Ethical Consumer rates all companies on their likely use of tax avoidance strategies. Its research showed that Aviva had several subsidiaries in tax havens, such as Luxembourg, which were considered to be high risk for tax avoidance.
The company's 2025 Tax Strategy stated "We act with honesty and integrity, engaging with HMRC and other relevant tax authorities on a transparent and cooperative basis.”
“Aviva Investors manages various investment fund vehicles which are resident in low tax jurisdictions, including Luxembourg, Guernsey and Jersey ... [which] are cost efficient and mitigate tax arising within the fund, ensuring that income and gains are predominantly taxed in the hands of the investor”, it added. “This allows investors with different tax profiles (e.g. tax exempt UK pension funds) to pool capital without increasing the amount of tax they would otherwise pay."
In 2024, Aviva’s highest paid director received $7,193,000. Ethical Consumer considered any pay over £1 million to be excessive, and therefore marked companies down for this.
Overall the company scored poorly in Ethical Consumer’s rating – subscribe to see the score out of 100.
This profile was written in December 2025. Most of the research was conducted in March 2025.
Subscribe to read Aviva's full ethical ratings.
We always check the ethics of our advertisers
Sign up to see the full company profile including company ethiscores and all the stories behind the scores.