Aviva has signed a five-year agreement with Countrywide to provide its mortgage and rental customers with protection insurance.
The deal replaces a former distribution agreement with Friends Life that began in 2002, before Aviva bought Friends in 2015.
Borrowers will be able to access Aviva’s life insurance, critical illness and income protection cover through Countrywide’s network of more than 900 branches, which arranged more than 90,000 mortgages last year.
The deal will see protection business underwritten through Aviva’s Life Protection Solutions platform, which the company claimed gives borrowers faster underwriting decisions and secure digital storage of policy documents.
Daren Boys, strategic partnerships portfolio director at Aviva, said: “This is a significant distribution agreement with our long-standing partner Countrywide, which will see customers benefitting from Aviva’s strong digital capabilities.
“Customers’ protection needs rightly come into sharp focus during the house buying or property rental process and our market leading digital ALPS protection proposition will help protect more lives, more easily through an enhanced customer experience.”
Last week Countrywide reported its operating profits fell to £6.5m in the first half of the year, a fall of 98 per cent.
This was because trading was quieter than the same period last year, which was unusually busy because of stamp duty changes and the European Union referendum.
damian.fantato@ft.com
