Aviva survives the St. Jude's storm with claims of just pounds sterling 10M

Source: Daily Mail, LondonNov.儲存 08--INSURANCE giant Aviva escaped relatively unscathed from last month's St Jude's Day storm, as it revealed it has been landed with a claims bill of just pounds sterling 10m.Boss Mark Wilson, pictured below, said the storm was not as severe as expected and claims were comfortably covered by the amount it sets aside each month for extreme weather events.The New Zealander said: 'We thought it would be bigger ? we got as many claims as we thought but the size of claims was lower than expected.'Other firms were hit harder, with rival RSA on Tuesday revealing its claims bill could hit pounds sterling 65m.FTSE?100-listed Aviva was hit harder by the flooding in Toronto and Alberta in Canada over the summer.But it added that cost-cutting had helped offset this and that it is on target to save pounds sterling 400m in annual costs by 2014.Wilson said the firm is on track to cut 2,000 jobs ? or 6pc of its global workforce ? by the end of the year.Posting its third quarter update, t迷你倉e insurer (down 9.4p at 435.9p) revealed cash generation in the first nine months of the year was flat on the same period last year.But there were more obvious signs of progress in Aviva's painstaking recovery.The value of new business ? a key measure of success ? grew by 14pc to pounds sterling 571m.This was driven by 33pc growth in France, 40pc in Turkey, 48pc in Poland and 43pc in Asia. But Southern Europe continued to pose a major headache, with Italy dropping 63pc and Spain falling 41pc.Wilson was brought in to revive the household name after years of poor performance.His predecessor, Andrew Moss, was forced to quit after a shareholder rebellion in 2012 over his pay.Wilson has helped cut the sprawling insurer down to size, offloading numerous parts of the business including the pounds sterling 1.7bn sale of its US operation last month.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Daily Mail (London, ) Visit the Daily Mail (London, ) at .dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage