Welcome to Aviva. Before we start the presentation, some formalities, the usual disclaimer, and forward-looking statements notice. In particular, I'll just draw your attention quickly to the bottom section of this slide, which covers the B Share and illustrative consolidation ratio, both of which you'll be hearing more about during today's presentation. With that, I'd like to invite Amanda Blanc, our CEO, up to the stage.
Thank you, Rupert. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2021 results presentation. Ahead of our positive update, I just wanted to acknowledge that today's results are obviously taking place against the backdrop of a great human tragedy in the Ukraine. We know that everyone in the room and listeners will join us in hoping for a swift and peaceful end to the fighting there. For those of you in the room, I am delighted to finally see you in person. I thought you only existed on those Zoom screens actually since the first time I was appointed CEO now nearly two years ago. A really big welcome to you. What can you expect today?
Firstly, I'm gonna take a few minutes to update you on the strategic progress we're making and detail several important strategic updates. Secondly, Jason will take you through the 2021 financial results and our capital management plans in greater detail. Lastly, I'll talk to you about our ambitions and plans for the next phase of our strategy and why I believe that we're only just starting to realize the full potential of Aviva. We will then, of course, take your questions. Let's get started. Since I was appointed Aviva's CEO, my entire focus has been on three priorities: focusing the portfolio, rebuilding the financial strength, and transforming Aviva's performance. In the last 20 months, we've moved with conviction and pace, and we've made tremendous progress on all fronts. Our success has been built upon our people.
Before we get into the detail, I would like to thank all of my colleagues across Aviva for their hard work, dedication, and commitment, especially under the challenging circumstances of the COVID pandemic. In recognition of that effort, we are giving each of our 22,000 employees GBP 1,000 in Aviva shares to say thank you. Aviva is now a much more focused, stronger, and higher performing business. I believe we've laid the foundations for the next phase of our strategy, which is delivering Aviva's promise. I'll talk about where we go from here later this morning, but first, I'd like to recap on the journey that we've been on, starting with refocusing the portfolio. Over the past 12 months, we have completed eight disposals and collected GBP 7.5 billion in proceeds.
Aviva is now a much simpler business, with market-leading propositions in our attractive core markets, the U.K., Ireland, and Canada. We have a very strong customer franchise, a diversified and highly complementary mix of businesses that serves all of our customers' needs and strong synergies in our model. This means that we can now focus all of our efforts on targeted areas where we can win and profitably grow. We've also boasted our financial strength. The success of the disposals means that we've been able to rebuild our financial strength and deliver a substantial return of capital to shareholders. External debt was reduced by GBP 1.9 billion, reducing our solvency to leverage ratio to below 30% and lowering our debt costs by GBP 100 million annually.
Our Solvency II cover ratio is above our 180% working level, and we have healthy central liquidity and attractive and sustainable cash generation from our core businesses, supporting investment in growth opportunities. Today, we are fulfilling our commitment to shareholders by announcing an increased total capital return of GBP 4.75 billion. It's the transformation of the performance that gets me really excited. We have excellent momentum across the board, as you can see from this slide. Let me highlight a few facts and figures. Aviva's growing and profitable. Life new business sales grew by 23%, driven in part by bulk purchase annuities with a record of GBP 6.2 billion of volumes at robust margins.
General insurance premiums are up 6% and at their highest level for over a decade with a combined ratio of 92.9%, including record premiums and profits in Canada this year. Savings and retirement net flows were up 17%, exceeding GBP 10 billion, which is a record for Aviva. Importantly, our customer franchise in the U.K. is growing. Customer experience scores are improving, and we continue to build on our position as the number one trusted insurance brand in the U.K. We aren't just bringing in more business. We're doing it in a much more efficient way than before. We have delivered a GBP 244 million cost reduction, and we've completed the actions to meet our GBP 300 million commitment in 2022. Now we are going further.
We saw the beginning of the transformation in Aviva Investors with improved fund performance, increased external fund flows, and a 7% reduction in the cost income ratio. Now all of this ultimately translated into cash generation. A 22% increase in cash remittances to GBP 1.66 billion. As you can see, the strategy is delivering results. We have, you know, a strong operating momentum within the businesses. We're demonstrating areas that we have targeted, and we are confident in the outlook for Aviva. This improved performance and successful execution of the strategy allows us to make 4 important announcements today. Capital return, updated dividend policy, investment in the business, and more ambitious targets. Starting with the capital return to shareholders.
Today we are announcing a capital return of GBP 4.75 billion, a figure well in excess of our original promise of at least GBP four billion. This means that we will have returned the entire GBP 7.5 billion of disposal proceeds through both debt reduction and capital returns, fulfilling the commitment that we made to our shareholders when we set out our intention to focus the portfolio. The GBP 4.75 billion is comprised of a GBP 1 billion share buyback which we announced in August last year, and is due to complete this month, and the additional GBP 3.75 billion announced today. Jason will talk you through the mechanics of this further distribution in more detail shortly. We're moving ahead rapidly, targeting completion by the middle of the year, subject to shareholder approval. Moving on to our updated dividend policy.
We are very confident in what we are doing, and we want investors to share that confidence in Aviva's future, and to have clarity on our dividend prospects. For 2021, we have declared a dividend of just over 22 pence per share at 5% year-on-year. Following the share consolidation, which will accompany the capital return, for 2022, we anticipate an illustrative dividend of around 31.5 pence per share, a step change increase of around 40% on 2021. For 2023, we anticipate an illustrative dividend of 33 pence per share, and sustained low- to mid-single-digit growth in the dividend per share thereafter. Again, I will let Jason talk you through the nuances of the illustrative share consolidation ratio. This is an attractive payout level. He gets all the best jobs.
Crucially, we believe it is sustainable for the long term. Moreover, surplus capital above our 180% solvency ratio that is not reinvested in the business is available for return to shareholders over time. We are also making strategic investments in the business to ensure that we keep winning. Our performance and financial strength have allowed us to invest a further GBP 200 million to support the next phase of cost reduction, and GBP 300 million to accelerate our organic growth plans. I am really excited to announce the acquisition of Succession Wealth today for GBP 385 million, which accelerates our ability to offer financial advice to six million of our workplace and individual pensions and savings customers. It enhances Aviva's position in the U.K.'s fast-growing U.K. wealth market. More on that later.
Such has been the pace of our progress that we're able to make several important upgrades to our group targets. We're upgrading our cumulative cash remittances target to greater than GBP 5.4 billion. We are announcing a new target of GBP 1.5 billion Solvency II own funds generation by 2024. This is a key indicator of growth. We're extending our cost saving target further to GBP 750 million. To conclude this section, 2021 was a year of strong progress, and we now have the foundations in place for the next phase of our development, delivering on Aviva's promise. We have a unique position of market strength and a clear strategy, deliverable plans to drive profitable growth and sustainable cash generation. You can already see this happening real time in our results today.
With that, let me now hand over to Jason, who's gonna take you through the detail of the results and our capital management report approach.
Thanks, Amanda, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to take you through what's been a really encouraging year with robust financial performance giving us momentum as we go into 2022. I'll start with a few words on some of the key numbers in today's update, which reflect the excellent progress we've made in 2021. First, cash remittances were up 22% to GBP 1.66 billion. As such, we're on track to achieve our target of greater than GBP 5 billion of remittances over 2021-2023. Our year-end Solvency II position was obviously very strong at 244%. Pro forma for the B Share, the planned debt reduction and the acquisition of Succession Wealth, our Solvency II ratio will be 186%. Earned funds generation was stable at GBP 1.2 billion.
As Amanda just mentioned, we're announcing a new target for own funds generation of GBP 1.5 billion per year by 2024. This demonstrates our ability to grow the business profitably. We continue to make very good progress on efficiency with costs down to GBP 2.86 billion, which is an 8% reduction compared to our 2018 baseline. Trading performance was excellent across life and savings and general insurance. Life sales were up 23% driven by another strong year of significant growth in savings and retirement and another strong year for BPAs. Gross written premiums in general insurance were up 6% to GBP 8.8 billion. Moving on to some of the detail now, starting with cash generation. Our businesses delivered strong cash remittances up 22% and on track to meet the target we set last year.
Today we're announcing a new target to deliver greater than GBP 5.4 billion in cash remittances for the three years 2022 to 2024. It's an ambitious target which reflects the confidence we have to grow the cash remittances from our businesses and the actions we're taking to transform performance across the group. Our new target, when combined with lower debt interest and lower head office costs, will increase free cash flow, supporting sustainable growth in dividends. Our Solvency II cover ratio on a shareholder basis increased from 202% to 244%. The increase was largely owing to disposal proceeds as well as operating capital generation and a little help from rising interest rates.
The 2021 year-end position of 244% is after the GBP 1 billion share buyback, GBP 1.5 billion reduction in subordinated debt, and around GBP 830 million of dividend payments made last year. This strong position enables us to announce today the new GBP 3.75 billion B share scheme. We estimate the capital cover ratio would have been approximately 186% at year-end 2021, allowing for the total shareholder return, the planned debt reduction, and also the acquisition of Succession Wealth. Following engagement with the trustees, we've chosen to commit GBP 75 million of funds to support our U.K. defined benefit pension schemes.
In terms of cash, our GBP 6.6 billion of central liquidity at the end of February would be around GBP 1.7 billion on a pro forma basis, slightly above our target level of around GBP 1.5 billion. Our pro forma debt leverage would be 28% within our target range of below 30% after factoring in our planned GBP 1 billion debt reduction. Indeed, we've got GBP 500 million of expensive debt maturing on April 21. Leverage remains in range when allowing for today's announced acquisition. On this forward-looking basis, we will continue to have significant financial flexibility. As a reminder, under our capital framework, we do consider capital above 180% over time as excess.
Any such excess would be available for further return to shareholders, higher investment into the business, or indeed M&A, like the acquisition we announced this morning. I'll now turn to today's dividend guidance. Our dividend strategy is to offer shareholders reliable growth in dividends built on the sustainable cash generation of the businesses. Our capacity for sustainable dividends is backed by a cash remittance target, which in turn is supported by the growth in own funds generation to GBP 1.5 billion per year by 2024. Today, we've announced a total dividend for 2021 of GBP 0.2205, up 5% and equating to a cash cost for the full year of around GBP 830 million. As you've already heard, we've also announced today clear guidance on dividends for the next two years, reflecting our confidence in the outlook for Aviva.
For 2022 financial year, we estimate a dividend payment of approximately GBP 870 million, which allowing for the share consolidation announced today, is equivalent to a per share amount of GBP 0.315, which will be around 40% higher than this year's dividend per share. Please note, DPS is based on an illustrative consolidation ratio. The actual consolidation is expected to be published in April in the shareholder circular. For 2023, we estimate growth of around 5% in the payment to approximately GBP 915 million, which would be equivalent to a per share amount of GBP 0.33. Again, DPS is based on illustrative share consolidation. Thereafter, we would expect low- to mid-single-digit growth in dividends per share. These dividend amounts represent an attractive cash payout level balanced against long-term sustainability.
Of course, the buildup of surplus capital above 180% gives potential for further shareholder returns over time. As mentioned earlier, we intend to pay out GBP 3.75 billion to shareholders via our B share scheme by mid-year. Together with our GBP 1 billion share buyback, which is just over 88% complete, the total GBP 4.75 billion cash return is comfortably ahead of our promise to return at least GBP 4 billion by the middle of 2022. The B share scheme is an appropriate mechanism to return capital following the disposals, and it can be executed rapidly. Let me now take a moment to highlight the key elements.
First, this is of course subject to shareholder approval, which will be sought at a general meeting on May 9, with full details to be set out in a circular in April. As you'd expect, it's subject to market conditions and the company's financial position not deteriorating materially. Under the proposed scheme, shareholders will receive 1 B share for each existing ordinary share. The B shares will then be promptly redeemed. Shareholders will receive in cash around GBP 1.01 for each existing share. The proposed share consolidation will take place at the same time, with the aim of keeping the market price of Aviva shares at about the same level as just before the B share scheme. An illustrative ratio for the consolidation is 75 new ordinary shares for 100 existing shares. The actual ratio will be published in the circular.
At this stage of the strategy drawing to a close, we can completely focus on our performance and growth ambitions. Turning now to cost savings. Against our existing target of GBP 300 million of cost reduction by the end of 2022, we've achieved 244 million of cost savings in 2021. We've now delivered all of the actions required to meet that target. On top of this, we've also absorbed around GBP 130 million of cost inflation since 2018, hence gross savings achieved to date are over GBP 370 million. While this is considerable progress, we remain focused on improving our efficiency further, and we are today announcing an upgraded cost target of GBP 750 million, including inflation, by 2024.
Using our current inflation assumptions, this new target equates to a GBP 400 million lower cost base against 2018, which is a GBP 100 million higher than our current target. We expect implementation costs to achieve this target to be around GBP 200 million and to be incurred across 2022 to 2023. As a reminder, this is inclusive of absorbing the stranded costs following the divestments. This is an ambitious target, but we have a number of levers to deliver this, like the further rationalization of products and further IT simplification. I'll now turn to the business unit performance, starting with U.K. & Ireland Life. Given we're covering a lot of ground today, I'll keep my comments on these market pages reasonably brief. Of course, I'm happy to answer questions after the presentation.
U.K. & Ireland Life has had a good year, with evidence of improving performance across almost all of our key business lines. Importantly, cash remittances have risen 21% to GBP 1.2 billion. Headline own funds generation and profits are down in the period, primarily as a result of two things. First, we had significantly lower benefits from one-offs and management actions than in 2020. The contribution from this line item for profit in the full year 2021 is positive GBP 77 million, in line with our guidance of GBP 0-GBP 200 million. This is nearly a GBP 400 million delta compared with the prior year of GBP 469 million. Secondly, despite excellent trading and a healthy return on capital, which I'll come back to, annuities was impacted by the lower spread environment when compared with the strong prior year.
I'll now take you through the key business lines, starting with savings and retirement. It's been an excellent year for savings and retirement, with profits in AUM up 24% and 19%, respectively. This really is one of our standout businesses, newly established just over 5 years ago, and it's great to see it going from strength to strength. Over GBP 5 billion of net inflows for each of advisor platform and workplace ensured the business reached an important milestone this year, achieving GBP 10 billion of net inflows one year earlier than our target. This is a result of having well-designed and reliable platform, excellent service levels, and our very strong relationships with intermediaries. Our ambition is to grow net flows by at least 10% a year over the next three years.
Profits grew strongly in the period, and we expect this to continue as we focus on efficiency and benefit from operating leverage as the platform asset base grows. Next, protection and health, which Doug Brown and I showcased in November at our In Focus event. Protection and health is well-positioned, capital generative, with good growth prospects. Despite sales being slightly lower, strong margin improvement and experience drove a 13% increase in VMB to GBP 188 million and a 21% increase in operating profit. Our aim is to grow the VMB of this business to help achieve the ambition of 5%-7% per year increase in VMB across all of our life businesses. Moving on to annuities and equity release.
As I mentioned, the low credit spread environment was a key factor in the lower VMB and the operating profit in the period for annuities. Importantly, as we indicated at Q3, we secured our reinsurance and purchased in Q4 around GBP 850 million of good quality and liquid assets originated by Aviva Investors. We significantly increased margins in the second half. Even after this, gilts and supras were 46% of assets backing new business for the year, compared to 21% in 2020, giving us much more optionality for the future. Consequently, as I've repeatedly guided, margins remain the levels seen in previous years. We do continue to make a very healthy return on capital with IRR over 13%.
BPA trading has been very strong with our highest level of sales on record, with GBP 6.2 billion of premiums written in 2021. This bodes well for the growth of this business and the long-term cash generation it will drive over time. Turning to general insurance now. We've seen strong profitable growth in 2021 in our GI business. Cash remittances were up 38% to GBP 417 million, and operating profit was up 52% to GBP 762 million, driven by a combination of improved underlying performance and a reduction in COVID-19 related claims compared with the prior year. This is partly offset by lower levels of frequency benefits. Costs were down 5% across general insurance, which is good progress. Our COR was 92.9%, a four-point improvement.
Prior year development added 0.4% to the reported COR, with a small release in the second half following a small strengthening in the first. While there are some manageable headwinds in these markets, we're confident in continuing to meet our ambition to achieve a combined ratio of below 94% across general insurance going forward. In the U.K., we had a very good year. Commercial line premiums are up 15% while achieving an improvement in COR to 94.6%. Our January In Focus event showcased the strength of our proposition and our ambitions for the future, and these results are evidence of the great work that Adam, Nick Major, and the team are all doing. In personal lines, premiums are marginally lower, down 2%.
This is a good result given the backdrop of soft motor pricing and significantly lower levels of travel insurance in the year. Our launch of the Aviva brand on the price comparison websites has been a notable success, with an increase in premiums of 23% through this channel. Combined ratio has risen 2%, primarily due to lower frequency benefits. Canada had an exceptional year in 2021, not least with its highest level of premiums and highest profits on record. Commercial line premiums are up 10% while delivering a combined ratio of 86.8%. We benefited from the favorable rate environment, high policy retention, and our pivot toward mid-market is proving very successful. In personal lines, premiums were up 3% despite rate reductions introduced earlier in the year in Ontario, and the combined ratio was a very healthy 92.6%.
Turning now to Aviva Investors, which has been through a lot of change in the past year under Mark Versey's new leadership. With a renewed focus on efficiency and our core strengths of real assets, infrastructure, credit, and sustainable equities is starting to show results, but with much more to come. Operating profit was up 64% to GBP 41 million, with the cost income ratio reduced 7 points to 86%. Although we're targeting much further improvement here with an ambition to be lower than 75%. External net flows improved to GBP 3.3 billion in the year, and 69% of funds under management were above the one-year benchmark for performance. That concludes my business review. In summary, a really encouraging year.
We've completed our disposal program, we've repaid debt, and we're delivering on our promise to shareholders to return GBP 4.75 billion of capital. We've made excellent operational progress in 2021, and financial performance is encouraging, giving us momentum as we move into 2022. This has put us in a strong and confident position, able to give you clear guidance on dividend outlook. With that, thank you, and back to you, Amanda.
Okay. Having completed the refocus of the portfolio and improved the financial strength of Aviva, what I'd now like to talk about is our strategy, about the very significant opportunities and plans we have to grow our business profitably, and about why I'm certain we can and will deliver on Aviva's promise. We have the right strategy. We have built it around customers and their needs and their challenges. We've been working at pace to execute on four strategic priorities, growth, customer, efficiency, and sustainability. I think we're making really good progress on all fronts, but we are only just getting started. The progress we've made has given us so many more opportunities to go after. Firstly, let me start with growth and how we are building on a unique position of market strength.
Aviva combines market-leading positions across every one of our business lines, insurance, wealth, and retirement, with strong synergies in our model that are a source of real competitive advantage. Each of our business lines plays a crucial role. Our insurance and wealth businesses are our customer acquisition engines, fueling our top-line growth and enhancing our returns. Our BPA business drives our long-term cash generation, while our heritage business provides a rich seam of customer opportunities for our wealth and retirement businesses, as well as supporting our dividend policy. The clear synergies within our model are a real source of competitive advantage. We can deliver more value to our customers with our outstanding brand, distribution strength, great products, and customer engagement and service.
We can do it more efficiently through our scale, our shared capabilities, the people and investments, and we can capture more of our value chain with our in-house asset manager, Aviva Investors. We realize the substantial benefit from diversification in our portfolio, GBP two billion in capital benefit alone. These are attractive growth opportunities across all of our markets. In wealth, we see a GBP 1.6 trillion market opportunity growing to GBP 2.1 trillion in 2024 that we are playing into with our workplace and our individual wealth businesses. In insurance, we're in a desirable and growing market and operating in the most attractive market segments in those markets. Retirement is another area where our aging population naturally leads to a growing need for retirement solutions for both corporates and individuals. Aviva's position and model is truly unique.
We have a tremendous asset and a platform from which we can successfully expand and develop further. My first priority area is targeted growth, and as you will see, we have ambitious but deliverable plans. The wealth business is central to our growth ambition. We're building an integrated wealth offering, which I'll talk about in more detail on the next slide. We continue to work and grow our workplace pension business, adding over 200,000 new customers to the Aviva franchise every year. We're investing to further enhance the leading master trust proposition to make the most of this GBP 460 billion market growth opportunity. We are seeing some of the strongest flows in the market onto our advisory platform. A final point to note, as you can see on this slide, we are renaming our savings and retirement business Wealth.
We believe this is better aligned to our ambition and how the business is growing. Aviva Investors and our U.K. Life business are working so closely together to drive growth in BPA, wealth, and external funds with our award-winning real asset origination capabilities and a leading suite of climate transition and ESG funds. We will continue to participate at scale in the U.K. BPA market. Of course, profitably growing our insurance business is a critical priority. We've outlined our growth plans in U.K. commercial, in GI, and in protection and health businesses during our recent In Focus sessions, which I hope you all enjoyed. I won't repeat those here, except to say that we are also going after attractive growth opportunities in U.K. Retail personal and high net worth segments, where we have added capabilities with digital innovation and the AXA XL high net worth acquisition.
In Canada, we are focused on growing personal lines through digital direct and accelerating growth in our commercial lines in mid-market and the much larger multinational business. As I said earlier, we're investing GBP 300 million, GBP 1 million a year for a GBP 100 million operating profit in 2025. Coming back to wealth. This is an exciting opportunity for Aviva and an area where we can really drive the growth of the group, and now is the right time for us to go after it. We have a clear vision. We've been working to develop a truly differentiated wealth offering for our customers that meets their needs across all of their life stages, provides them with the full range of solutions from pensions to investments and retirements, and full flexibility around advice, from guidance to hybrid to full advice.
This offering plays to Aviva's unique strength as a customer company with over 6 million customer base, customer acquisition engine, and real scale opportunities. We have so many components in place already. Our market leading workplace pensions, our advisory platform, retirement solutions, and the award-winning Wealthify proposition for early savers. There are still some gaps that we need to fill. With this in mind, we're ambitious about the growth potential in this space. We have 150 billion of assets under management today, and our aim is for a double-digit growth in net fund flows going forward. We're moving at pace to build out the required capabilities, and I'm so delighted this morning to be announcing the acquisition of Succession Wealth.
Succession Wealth is a leading national independent advice firm of 200 planners that offers high-quality financial advice to 19,000 clients with GBP 9.5 billion worth of assets, and has a track record of consolidating advice firms and delivering improved customer outcomes. There is a strong strategic rationale for this acquisition. The addition of Succession Wealth will allow us to better support the 6 million of our workplace pension and individual pension customers as they go through critical life decisions, such as the transition to retirement, and to recapture a material part of the GBP 6 billion of annual maturing outflows from our heritage and workplace business. Combined with our existing market leading investment management and platform capabilities, we'll now have a stronger proposition for Succession Wealth's own existing customers.
We're expecting a double digit return on our investment over the medium term through accelerated growth. Succession's highly experienced, incredible management team will continue to run and grow the business working closely with our wealth colleagues, and I'm really looking forward to welcoming James and the team to the Aviva group. Turning next to customers. Customers are at the heart of what we do. That's really easy to say, but our customers truly are central to our strategy, and this is what sets us apart from our competitors and gives us such confidence. We work hard to deliver on our customers' expectations, and we have in our armory a trusted brand that stands behind its promises, transparent products at fair prices, excellent services and support in the critical times, such as the recent storms, easy omnichannel access, digital, phone, face-to-face. Strong intermediary relationships.
We are acting in a sustainable and ethical way. Therefore, my second priority is to ensure that Aviva consistently does more to deliver an outstanding customer experience and innovation to customers. Digital experience is central to our customer engagement strategy and how we bring the full breadth of Aviva's products and services to all of our customers. What I like to call One Aviva. It is increasingly how our customers want to interact with us. We're already making great progress here. For example, six million of our customers are registered on MyAviva today, and our ambition is to get to more than eight million by 2024. Today, nearly 70% of our direct sales are completed online, and we aspire to get that to 85%. However, there are some areas that we need to improve.
We know that self-service capability improves customer satisfaction and drives down costs at the same time. We know that a more intuitive mobile app experience opens up easier and more efficient customer purchasing. Today, nearly 50% of our customers indicate that they are satisfied with our self-service capability, but that's not good enough. Our ambition is to take that to 70% satisfaction by 2024. As part of our growth investment, we are investing here, in particular to fix, to connect, and to enhance our digital customer journeys. Most importantly, as you can see on the right, we are building engaging mobile experience and services, and we are harnessing data to deliver compelling, richer, and more personalized engagement. Ultimately, better experience will drive customer NPS, which will drive product holdings.
Innovation is also critical to sustaining our relevance to our customers over time as their needs and technology evolve. I'm really pleased with our progress over the last 12 months, and we've got a new three-pronged approach. We are building and scaling up new propositions at pace. We're testing a new idea every week. We're partnering with FinTechs and Insurtechs to build the next generation businesses and tap into future profit pools. We invest directly into the startup ecosystem to bring learnings back into the core organization. We've got some really great successes here. You've all heard me talk about Wealthify, which is the award-winning robo-advisor that is doubling its AUM every six-nine months and is expected to reach GBP one billion of AUM by the end of the year. Another great example is Aviva Zero.
Just launched last week, a new proposition and a platform that has been built and launched in under six months. Zero is the new green proposition in the U.K. motor market with inbuilt carbon offset that uses our data capabilities to deliver a step change in customer experience and costs. I'm really excited about its potential to be a source of future growth for us. The third priority area I would like to talk about is efficiency. We will maximize our growth opportunities when we operate at top quartile efficiency. We've made excellent progress on our cost targets, which has been underpinned by strong momentum on levers such as IT simplification and the rationalization of our product suite. There is clearly more to go after. No area of Aviva is out of scope.
We have real ambition for the next couple of years, and we are investing GBP 200 million to complete our cost reduction program. One area I would like to highlight today is the reduction in our property footprint. We have already exceeded our original aim of a 30% reduction, and I am delighted to announce that we will be moving our headquarters to 80 Fenchurch Street over the course of 2023. This will deliver a 47% reduction in our head office footprint, significant cost savings, and an improvement in carbon footprint. I've been asked many times what I mean by top quartile efficiency. This slide gives you a feel of how we think about it for each business, what we're aiming for, and what we are doing.
As you can see, we are not there yet, but we have made some progress in 2021, and some good progress, and our plans are in place to achieve this ambition by 2024. Much of the improvement will be driven by cost reduction. As we fully implement the changes to our operating model, continue to simplify, digitize, and automate our business, and of course, optimize outsourcing. Also, as we grow our business with the great leverage of scale and cost discipline, our productivity will improve. The bottom line is that my management team and I are laser focused on cost, and we will deliver here. Finally, my fourth priority area is sustainability. Our customers are increasingly demanding that companies act in a sustainable and ethical way.
Aviva has a powerful 30-year sustainability heritage, and I am determined that we will continue to lead U.K. financial services on sustainability. We were the first major insurer globally to commit to being net zero by 2040 across our operations, the supply chain, underwriting, and investment. Of course, sustainability is more than climate action. We play our part in building stronger, more resilient communities, for example. We are investing GBP 10 billion in U.K. infrastructure and real estate. We are committed to reinvesting 2% of our profits into the communities in the U.K., Ireland, and Canada. We are changing the way we do business and using our influence to encourage others to do the same. So far, we have deployed GBP 7.6 billion into green assets, and a further GBP 783 million into sustainable transition loans.
We played a leading role at COP 26, and we were a founding partner of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, which was launched last July. We're aligning our underwriting and investment policies to our climate transition plan, and we are working to offer more of our simple ESG choices to our customers, such as Aviva Zero or our award-winning ESG fund propositions. There is much more still to do. To conclude, we have made rapid and substantial progress and built the foundations for the next phase of our strategy. We have built significant momentum, and our strategic execution is delivering results. From this platform, we have been able to return substantial capital to our shareholders, put in place an attractive and sustainable dividend policy, and also invest strategically in the business.
We have upgraded our financial targets for growth, cost, and cash generation, and we believe our plan represents a compelling investment case for Aviva. We have done what we said we would do. While we take satisfaction in that, we know we are only just getting settled into our stride. We are only just beginning to exploit the rich seam of growth opportunities that are available to us. We are only just starting to reap the potential benefits of our investments, and we are only just beginning to accelerate our performance. We have the strategy, we have the leadership, and we have the people in place to deliver on our promise and fulfill this potential that we all know Aviva has. Now it's time to take your questions. If Jason and Rupert could please join me on stage. Thank you.
Right. Have we got mics? We do. If you just wait for a microphone to come and then just state your name and institution as usual. Let's start with Ashik.
Thank you. Good morning, Amanda. Good morning, Jason.
Good morning.
This is Ashik Musaddi from Morgan Stanley. Just a couple of questions I have is, I mean, first of all is on the cash plan. I mean, clearly you have upgraded the cash GBP 5.4 billion, which kind of implies that annually as well, the GBP 1.3 billion net number that you had given would be higher as well. That compares with your dividend cost of, say, around GBP 900 million. So that leaves, like, 600, 500, 600 million. Now I can clearly see you have plans to put money at work for organic growth, some inorganic growth, but any thought process, might be a bit early I agree it's still early, for talking about that 500, 600 million, but any thought process how you're thinking about that extra cash you'll be generating?
The second thing is you're going closer to 180%, which has been your stated target in past. But we are in a tough world at the moment. Although the risk is a bit more centered around Central Eastern Europe, but not here at the moment, but you never know when the risk overflows as well. How do you think about this 180%? I mean, are you taking any sort of positive expectation that the U.K. regulatory change that is coming through because of Solvency II review is going to benefit your 180%, you'll be about 200. Are you taking those things into benefit, or are you just sticking with the original plan of 180%, ignoring anything else at this point? Just one last question.
I mean, the GBP 300 million you're saying that you'll be investing in growth gives you GBP 100 million of extra profits. Now, clearly, you have laid out reasonable strategies, et cetera, but what would be the biggest chunk of that operating profit, gaining basically on that GBP 300 million investment? Because clearly, I mean, it's a, it's a big, 33% return on investment on that GBP 300 million. That's how I am thinking. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for that. We'll start with the last question, we'll work backwards from there. On the GBP 300 million in the growth investments. I think the way we're looking at this is right across the group, Ashik. There's no one silver bullet, which means that, you know, if we just do that, we'll deliver the GBP 100 million profit. The significant investments will be in the wealth businesses. In things like the Master Trust proposition, looking at direct savings that and the opportunities that exist there, accelerating our growth in U.K. GI.
Adam's here, and you know, we've invested in Aviva Zero, which we launched last week, supporting the BPA growth, which we continue to see there will be opportunities in that growth as we move forward. There's a digital direct proposition in Canada in enhancing our digital customer experience, which will in turn lead to more products per customer. I think, you know, the way you should look at this is, it's pretty sort of good risk management. We're not saying that we have to deliver one thing to deliver that GBP 100 million of profit. We basically outlined what we tried to do on the slides, because of course, you know, it's really easy to put it on the slides, and we wanted to show you what the actual projects were.
When you get a chance to go back and you look at the slide, on the left-hand side of the slide, you'll see exactly what each of the projects are in that growth space. You know, obviously, we've not broken down the individual investments, which I'm sure you'd like us to do, but we're not gonna do that. To give you the confidence that that's what we've planned for. On the 180 target and the sort of consequences of what's going on externally, look, I think. Today, we've given you the pro forma following the acquisition of Succession Wealth. We've returned a good chunk of money to shareholders at GBP 4.75 billion.
We've also shown we want to invest in the business, and we want to allow ourselves flexibility to do things like, you know, like as we've done with the growth investment and the M&A of Succession Wealth. I think that we've got clear plans in place. We've also said that the capital framework is set, and if over time there is excess capital that isn't going to be invested in the business, that we will return that to shareholders. I think it's just too soon to be able to say that bearing in mind the environment in which we're operating and all of the announcements that we've made and committed to today. On Solvency II review, we've not built that into the plan, of course.
We don't know what the details of that are yet. Obviously, we are really encouraged by the John Glen announcement last week. We've been working really hard on that, and I can see Hugh Francis sitting here, who's done a fantastic job on that. We've you know we were pleased with the risk margin announcement. There's more uncertainty around the matching adjustment, but it's more positive than it was. I think, you know, we came away from last week feeling sort of encouraged about that, and we will wait to see the detail. On your first question, Jason, did you wanna pick that up?
Sure. I mean, you're right in that the cash flow target which is upgraded does give us more flexibility, and then part of that is to create some opportunity to invest, and Amanda's outlined some of that. Some of that will come from the balance sheet, which is very strong. We've come into this, you know, with significant cash. We've also got some opportunities to reinvest that. You know, once we've got the capital and the cash generated, gives us some choices, and I think we can set out the framework for that.
Okay. Next question, Farooq.
Hi, thanks very much. Farooq Hanif from JP Morgan. Firstly, on Aviva Investors, if you are given, you know, the ability to widen what kind of assets, illiquid assets you can invest in, towards, let's say, the more optimistic end of, you know, whatever it is that John Glen actually said, what's the scale of ambition in terms of illiquids and real assets in Aviva Investors? Will you also be looking to isolate, you know, a principal capital unit within that, which is where you originate that we can see separately? Secondly, on Succession Wealth, you mentioned, it's, you know, it's been an IFA consolidator. Is that also going to be part of the strategy going forward?
You know, when you're capturing the GBP 6 billion of outflows from workplace and heritage, how are you gonna physically do that? Is it simply just making sure you reach all the customers, you know, targeting a certain base? If you could talk a little bit more about how you capture that. Thanks.
Okay. I'll pick up the second one, Jason, if you wanna pick up the point on the illiquid.
Sure. The Treasury's review, as Amanda said, is a welcome development. It took out some of the more downside-y scenarios that the PRA had been exploring earlier, or just at the back end of last year. We're not fully sure as to exactly what it means. It does give us choices. You know, Mark and his team have set up great capability in the U.K. to invest across a whole suite of different, you know, green and other infrastructure type assets. We have got flexibility, and we have some sort of seeds of ideas around what we could do if it could become broader, both on the balance sheet, but also potentially into the DC schemes, and I think that could be interesting. You know, I think we...
No one quite knows how to do that, but actually accessing the DC schemes is another potential leg up in our ability to invest into the longer term asset base.
On Succession Wealth, first of all, I think it is a fantastic business, and we're sort of super excited that the team are joining us. Yes, they will continue with their strategy of consolidation because that, you know, that's an important part of what they do. For us, you know, absolutely critical is each year, as we've said many times, we lose, you know, 6 billion of AUM of customers that come to the end of their natural product, and, you know, they will quite often say, "Can you give me some advice on what I should now do?" We are not in a position to be able to do that at scale.
They go, and we know that a significant number of them will go elsewhere, and they will take advice before they buy the next product. Now, what we have, and we've worked very hard over the last few months, is looking at the product and the process that we would put in place to be able to capture more of that, of those assets that leave us so that we can bring them and keep them in Aviva. As well as, of course, the 6 million existing Aviva customers that we have the opportunity to sell to. We think there's a sort of multifaceted opportunity with Succession Wealth, and, you know, we are pretty excited about this.
The fact that it's a wholly owned part of Aviva means that we can work really closely with that team.
Okay. Oliver.
Thank you. Oliver Steel, Deutsche Bank. So three questions. The first is, I mean, you say that this 500-600 million of excess cash remittance, excess cash generation, each year gives you sort of flexibility. I wonder if you can just give us a bit more of an outline as to where you see the gaps that might require M&A. And then within that, how much Succession Wealth might actually use up, if it's gonna continue to consolidate? And then a couple of slightly more detailed questions on the targets or the ambitions which you're setting. First is on the GI combined ratio. So you beat the 94% target very, very comfortably in 2021.
You've got something like three points of cost savings coming through across the U.K. and Canadian GI, but you're not really changing that 94% combined ratio target. What's going against you in that target? Secondly, on the annuity new business profit, you admitted that 2021 was a low margin, but you've only got 5%-7% growth targeted for the next few years.
Okay, thank you. I'll pick up the first one of those, and Jason, if you can pick up the second and third. On the excess and the flexibility, the gaps that might require M&A, actually, you will have seen from the slide that we put up there, that we don't really have many gaps in our offering. You know, we're in a fantastic position, and that's why we're quite excited about the future, Oliver. We don't really think there are any glaring gaps. You know, the one that there was really scale in the advice, and I think we have filled that with the acquisition this morning.
In terms of how much of the GBP 500 million will be used by Succession Wealth, we're not gonna talk about how much budget we're giving them for M&A. Clearly, there will be a high bar for any M&A that they do, and that will have to meet the required returns. I think they've proven that they can do that, and they will continue to do that. You know, they've been a consolidator of small IFA businesses around the country, and we wouldn't think that the footprint of that consolidation would change. It would be that type of business that they would be buying. Jason?
Yeah, I could probably say on that it's likely to be within the envelope of their own profitability.
Mm.
To give you some measure of the sort of scale that that's likely to be. On the combined ratio, yes, it's less now or better than 94%, so we've not sort of said that that's the pure target. I think there is some opportunity to improve. The U.K. was slightly above that this year, kind of just slightly below. I think you sense, you know, we don't think Canada, you know, that's a sustainable level of combined ratio in Canada. It was a particularly strong 2021.
You know, as we put that, you know, together, we can see some, you know, tailwinds from, as you say, from cost reduction, you know, continued strong performance in commercial personal lines, and it's still all to play for, I think, you know, with plenty of opportunity for us in U.K. personal lines to do better.
On annuity margins?
On annuity margins, I think actually 2021 is not a bad level of margin to think about projecting forward from. You know, around 3.6%, I think, VMB margin. We manage it to produce a return on capital. Obviously we had a high allocation to gilts, which therefore requires less capital to write the business, but obviously less margin as well at the same time, so you can manage your overall capital is our primary way that we allocate and we drive pricing in that area. You know, we'll see some. I mean, spreads have widened in the last, you know, 5 days or so. You know, who knows exactly where they'll settle?
I think something around that sort of 3.5%, you know, possibly slightly better than that margin, you know, delivering something around low teens% IRR is the way that we've configured the business.
Okay. Next question. Blair?
Thanks very much. It's Blair Stewart from Bank of America. A couple of questions. The Succession deal looks very much like a strategic acquisition and a good one at that, but it's certainly not a financial acquisition, at least on the face of it. So how do you weigh up the strategic versus the financial, given that buying your own shares back would give you a 15% return at least, given the valuation? Just coming back to that question about residual cash, I guess. And then, you've said that you don't think there's any other major gaps in what needs to be done, which it does suggest that shareholders should be looking for more capital to be returned. Correct me if I'm wrong. Second question is just on the annuity side.
I'm slightly surprised with some of your comments, Jason, that, you know, I would have thought that two-thirds investing in gilts was a little bit disappointing and below what you would normally target. Does that reflect a new view on the correct asset allocation for annuities, or is it an inability or weakness on the asset origination side that you can look to improve on? I think just coming back to the question earlier, why is the annuity side not going to improve from here? Finally, can you make some comments on initial impressions and observations of the U.K. P&C market post the FCA review, and what's going on with the various pricing in motor and home? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thanks, Blair. I'll pick up the one in three, and Jason can pick up the point on annuity. I think you said strategic and not financial. Look, it is our job to look for the strategic opportunities that exist for the medium to long term of this business. When we look at advice capability, and we look at the wealth market, and we look at the AUM that we are losing each year because we cannot give that advice capability, it is clearly a gap that we need to fill. What you see here is the financial metrics of the deal.
What you don't see is, I guess, the other side of the equation, which is the benefit that it's going to give Aviva over time. You know, we will, as we've always done, you know, come back to you as we are sort of proving what we do. We really believe that our customers need this, you know, whether it's a sort of hybrid advice capability or a full advice capability, and we will build upon that. We believe our customers need and want that, and we believe that us allowing those customers to go to other platforms, to go to other places to buy those products when we are perfectly capable of doing it, is amiss strategically for us. You know, that's a really important thing.
I think the other thing to note is that currently on the platform we play in the sort of low margin end of it. This will allow us to take higher margin. That's the bit that's sort of not factored into the overall when you're looking at just the pure financial price of the deal. This is us thinking about the future, the medium to long term of Aviva. I think your point around there, therefore capital. You know, there's no other major gaps and more capital to be returned. You know, we've said and I think we've been clear about the capital framework. We will return excess capital if we believe we can't invest it well. We reaffirm that commitment.
We affirmed it on stage, we reaffirm it now. But also we do see opportunities to invest in the business as we've shown you this morning. It's our job to do that, right? Find the right opportunities and deliver a good investment. We need to prove then that we can deliver that good investment. On U.K. P&C post the pricing practices, actually relatively calm. You know, I think we spoke a lot last year. Many questions when we did these sort of sessions would be so much thrown up into the air, you know, who knows what the outcome would be. There's a lot of Ps in there.
I think we always said that Aviva felt we were in a very strong position because of our brand positioning, and that has proven to be the case. We've seen retention levels improved. Of course, we've seen, you know, the new business prices go up, renewal prices go down in the market, generally. But for us, we feel like we've executed it well, and sort of looking at the team in the room that have done that, I think we've executed it well, and I think we feel quite confident now about how we look forward post-pricing practices. We've always welcomed that review. Jason?
On the annuity side, I think you said two-thirds. I heard you said 46% of the assets were backed by annuities. Other way around.
It was just a test.
You're doing more math. I think just on that, the constraint is only really, you know, quality, and value. You know, on the public side, we didn't see much value in corporate bonds in 2021 with the spread tightening. On the illiquid side, actually it's a pretty good performance. You know, we're pleased with that. That's a strength to build on. You know, Mark and his team, you know, have got, you know, lots of great plans for the future. I don't think there's any real constraints there, but obviously it's a lot of work to continually produce that sort of level year after year.
Andrew?
It's Andrew Crean at Autonomous. three questions if I can. Firstly, have you got any comments on how IFRS 17 may shake down? Obviously there'll be initial comments. Secondly, I notice your ROE, Solvency II ROE target. You've changed the basis of it, which adds about 2-2.5 points to your return, but you haven't changed the 12% target. Could you talk a bit about that? Then thirdly, we've talked a bit about bolt-on M&A, but what about transformational? Are you happy with the balance of your business? I'm thinking particularly the very heavy load of life versus property casualty, and even within life, the heavy balance of IFA platform versus D2C, whether you would as a firm consider changing the balance through transformational M&A.
Oh, okay. Thanks, Andrew. Those first two questions seem perfect for Jason.
Sure. On IFRS 17, I think we've committed to what I've said verbally for the last year, but we've shied away from numbers. You know, we're not quite ready to provide reliable estimates of the impact. Our comments around the implementation of IFRS 17, it's a huge program. It's actually mostly in a pretty good place. But we do expect the annuity profit recognition to be very different, and that will impact the NAV. It will create this big CSM, and it will also impact the level of new business profitability, going forward. No impact to the targets. You know, cash and capital, you know, targets across the organization we don't expect to be impacted by that. You'll hear more from us on that later in the year. On the ROE target, yeah, we looked at that.
Obviously, when we set it up, we had a much different group with obviously France, Singapore and Poland and lots of other things. We also found that managing the ROE target with the challenges of TMTP amortization transitionals, for those of you that don't follow that, is actually really very difficult, you know, and it, the way that the reset mechanism works. We try to look through that and say how much capital. It's real capital, but the actual year-on-year movement in that is really very difficult for us to manage. We knock that out. We put in a charge for that capital, because it is real capital, into the ROE, and that rebalances and shows a smoother way that that actually develops.
The calibration of the target is largely a reflection of just the higher weighting to U.K. Life. You know, put simply, U.K. Life is, as everybody knows, a slightly lower return on capital business. You know, I still think the greater than 12% ambition from 10.7 that we hit in 2021 actually shows progress across the group.
On the M&A and transformation M&A, I think that hopefully what you've taken from this morning is that we really focus on transforming the performance of the business that we have. This is largely gonna be an organic strategy. You know, we've filled the capability gap with Succession Wealth, and, you know, we really feel that that is going to enhance our capabilities, further. There's always gonna be a real high bar for M&A investment. Sandra, you know, we just really focused on delivering the performance of the business that we have today.
Okay. Next questions. Larissa, is that you? Okay, my eyesight is not quite good enough.
Hi. Larissa van Deventer from Barclays. I wanna revert back to the comments you made on bulk annuities, please, and three questions in that regard. The first one, you mentioned bulk annuities as a potential area for growth. Is that something you would consider doing increasingly more capital allocation towards? Second one is, you mentioned optimism about the current situation of bulks. Can you comment on the pipeline? And specifically, if you consider 2021 to be representative at about GBP 30 billion in the market or whether you think there's potential for growth. And then related to that, do you foresee margin compression in the space with it becoming increasingly competitive, or do you believe that, I believe it's a 3.5% margin you mentioned, is sustainable?
Jason?
Yes, we would allocate more capital if we could get the return. You know, we do see that as a growth segment for us. It's unlikely to double, right? You know, we are sort of moderating. We don't want to become a pure BPA business, but we see that as an opportunity to grow. We see the market growing. I haven't got the final figures for where the market was this year, but it was slightly lower. I think, you know, if it grew to sort of GBP 35+ billion to GBP 50 billion within the year, that would actually relieve some of the margin pressure. It is more competitive today than it was in 2016. I think everybody knows that. Partly because of volumes, partly because, you know, more people going after it.
We still make a very healthy return on it. Managing that, as I said a moment ago to the question, managing that conundrum between capital assets and actual liability pricing is something that we do, we know, very intensively. We make a really good return on it, and it continues to provide, you know, really good source of profit and cash growth into the future.
Greig?
Morning, everyone. Greig Paterson, KBW. Three questions. One is, inflation assumptions on your DB scheme and your annuity. Did you change the long-term expectation assumptions? And if not, is there a possibility of that happening in 2022, causing a headwind to Solvency II? That's question one. Second one is, just can you elaborate, Jason, on you said there was an injection into the DB scheme that's gonna create a headwind to Solvency II. I wonder if you could just sort of quantify what that is. As a third point, in terms of your acquisition of the IFA network, and that it's an acquisitive network, I was wondering if you have a budget for it acquiring further IFAs and what that would be. Thank you.
Jason?
On the inflation assumptions, I think your first question was inflation assumptions. I mean, we mark to market our assumptions all the time. Staring at my Chief Capital Officer in the front row, but we do it all the time, you know, each period. You know, we have an active process to do that. You know, on the DB scheme, with the government changing from RPI to CPI, if not the other way around, you know, that's been a hot debate around the way to actually bring that in by 2030. But we made that choice, and that cost us quite a bit in 2020. You know, we keep up with events on inflation.
Of course, you know, like many, you know, we don't know what it'll be near term, but our longer term expectation is for it to return more to trend. On the DB scheme itself, we haven't actually had to put money into it formally. We are providing support through a contingent capital amount of GBP 75 million, as I said. That's the sort of thing people do when you do big capital returns and just sort of, you know, make sense. The fund is really well-funded. You know, you can see that from the IAS position. You can see it from any basis that you look at. This is an extremely well-funded scheme, which is one reason why it's able to sort of periodically enter into buyouts.
On Succession Wealth, M&A, I think we sort of answered the question earlier. We would see them continuing to consolidate within their market as they have been doing, and the same sort of type of deals that they have been doing. Yes, there is a budget for that, but we won't tell you exactly what that budget is, but that's built in.
Small
No. They're very small IFAs.
Yeah.
Businesses across the country.
Look, I'll just point back to what I said earlier. The envelope of their P&L, you know, we're not looking to commit, you know, another GBP 300 million-GBP 400 million. It would be, you know, little bolt-ons of teams and small firms.
Okay. Will?
Thanks. Will Hardcastle, UBS. Two or three questions on the P&C side. Chiefly, first of all, just on the year-to-date reforms and pricing that we've seen, are you able to give us any quantification on yours and whether that's seen you gain or lose market share? Secondly, inflation was touched on there quickly, but how are we seeing it on the P&C side? More thinking about the back book moves on the PYD, the ending change for inflation this time around. Thirdly, just thinking about the trade-off here, we've had higher investment yields. You've got cost saves coming through on P&C. How should we think about the trade-off between even better combined ratio prints versus the ability to put the foot down on growth a little bit and the trade-off at a sub 94% return on capital?
Sorry, sub 94% combined ratio on a return on capital basis. Thanks.
Yeah. Okay. In terms of the year-to-date performance on pricing, is that what you asked for?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. I mean, obviously we've seen motor rates come down last year, but I think the most recent indications that there's a start of an increase because people are building in inflation. You would expect that to be the case. We talked a little bit about our own inflation experience. We're able to manage that through the fact that we have these, you know, our Solus motor repair network, which is the second largest network in the country, that really helps. The great thing about general insurance, of course, is that you can keep pricing. You can price continuously. As you're seeing inflation trends coming through, you know, the team are pricing in those inflation trends.
We would expect to continue to do that as we go through the year. On the higher investment yields and would we put our foot down on growth. I think that the growth that we've seen has been balanced, you know, sort of fairly equally between the rating and new business. Where we price for new business, we're very confident about the technical price for that business. I'm looking at Nick Major, who is sort of sat in the audience, 'cause most of our growth has come from Commercial Lines. Because we...
You know, the market has been, you know, particularly hard, as you know, and because of our really strong distribution capability and our position with brokers, in effect, we're able to choose quality and be able to select risks, and we will continue to do that. We would never, ever in general insurance, just to be clear, drive growth over profit. That would just be crazy. We know that. You know, we know the consequences of doing that would be significant. When we talk about growth in the savings and retirement business, where we're opening the doors of the platform, it's very different to saying to the GI guys, "Go for it." You know, that's not what we would do. We would be very careful.
We're very careful about the segments in which we operate in, and then the technical pricing that sits around that, and of course, our own risk management capabilities that sit around that. Adam and the team are really, you know, really clear. We would never be putting them under pressure to grow, particularly if we don't need to.
Barrie.
Morning, it's Barrie Cornes from Panmure Gordon. Just a couple of questions for me, please. First of all, just wondered how sustainable you think the Canadian commercial combined is. It's obviously a very strong performance. The second question I had was in terms of the cost reduction program that you talked about this morning, the increases. It has all been well, but you have faced some criticism on service levels. I just wondered how you feel you can maintain or improve service levels with cost reduction program, please.
Okay. Jason, do you wanna pick up Canada and I'll pick up the service levels?
I mean, as I said, Canada had an exceptional year, 86.8%. I think in commercial was a strong year. I didn't think that is a combined ratio that you can bake in it across the entire period. Having said that, rate strength remains good, keeps coming through. Inflationary pressures in Canada, you know, are not probably as high as we see here in the U.K. We still continue to expect Canada commercials have a very good 2022, but perhaps not quite at that level across the board.
On the cost reduction program, this of course is a fine balance. The cost reduction program is not all about people coming out. I mean, I think it's really important to say that. That's about 50% of the cost reduction so far. We've also taken a significant amount of cost out of our property portfolio. We showed you that. We're reducing our IT estate, and of course, as we reduce the number of old platforms and systems that we have, the new platforms are much cheaper to run than those old platforms which, you know, are going out of service. We are moving on to more modern technology.
The other point around service levels is we've seen through the pandemic, and we've seen generally that customers are much more prepared to self-service on certain points. If we can digitize our customer journeys, and we have a target to digitize from 51%, which is where we are today, to 75%, then we can take a lot of that service pressure away from our colleagues in the operations so that they can focus on the customer interactions that really matter. The simple interactions can be done by customers themselves or by intermediaries, and we have a connect platform for brokers and the app for our direct customers. I think it's. There's no one answer as ever with cost reduction. It's about digitizing, automating, simplifying the business, moving on to more modern technology.
You know, we believe that that will come up with a good result for our customers. Our NPS scores, Barrie, are at 43. It's quite a positive score, you know, hopefully everybody appreciates that.
Nasib?
Hi, Nasib. I'm from UBS. Sorry, we're double teaming here. I've got five questions. So just on the wealth business and including Succession Wealth, can you give a bit more color on the margins? I know it's gonna depend on the level of advice that customers are taking, but just the average margins and how they compare to peers. And then secondly, just following up on the Aviva Investors questions. How does your capability compare to peers? And also, I noticed the Allianz sort of partnership of investing in real assets in London, and that seems like an asset in development which probably isn't funded by the annuity scheme. So is that eventually sort of a manufacturing of assets to go into the annuity scheme, and have you done these sort of asset investments before? Thank you.
Okay. Jason, you happy to take that one?
Sure. The Succession margins, you know, we've given you an EBITDA figure in the 2022 pro forma figure for the actions that we expect them to take and which is good progress. I couldn't tell you how it benchmarks relative to peers. I think it's actually pretty good, but we do have opportunities. We touched on this a bit in the release through the value chain to improve margin further. You know, to offer our platform, which is good for us. Actually good for customers 'cause it's lower rate than the platform they use at the moment. You know, it can work nicely for both of us and potentially further on the investment solution.
Part of the business case is to take the EBITDA that they produce and then improve it through, you know, integration into Aviva. We see a positive outlook for margin across that and it's, you know, part of the business case is assets plus margin growth within that. I think on the real asset side, again, I sort of mentioned this earlier, we do have opportunities, you know, to invest more expansively, either off the group balance sheet or through Aviva Investors. They will work, you know, closely in originating, you know, those ideas. There's a bit of a time slow burn on that stuff, but we have got appetite to do that.
We've got the capability to do that, we've got the financial resources to do it, and you know, that will set us up well. It will take quite a bit of time for those opportunities to come through, but certainly, that is something, you know, that we could add to the armory.
Okay. Oliver.
Sorry, I've got one more question. The low to mid-single digit growth that you're talking about in the dividend beyond 2023, how should we think about that, in terms of sort of being representative of your sort of own underlying growth in the business? And more specifically, does it include anything for deployment of the excess cash generation?
Okay. Jason?
You know, it's some way out. You know, we are trying to balance the opportunity for, you know, long-term reliability and long-term growth of the dividend of course. You know, the board will make its mind up at the time. We're trying to give some guidance today as to where we see, you know, the outlook for cash growth in the context. That level of reliability and growth that we are, you know, seeking to demonstrate over the next three years, you know, I think will set the organization up, you know, well, for success. We think that's about the right level.
Back to the point that came up earlier, you know, if, you know, we hit all these cash flow targets and we hit all these cost targets, which I'm sure we will, that will provide some choices, you know, around what we can do with excess cash and capital.
Okay. I think that's it. Amanda?
Yeah.
Over to you for closing comments.
Okay. I guess that I'm not gonna go through the presentation again. You'll probably be pleased to hear that. I just wanna say thank you very much for coming in. Hopefully we've given you plenty of food for thought this morning. The capital return, the new targets, the performance of the business and the projection on the dividend policy. Thank you very much for coming in and we hope to be able to do this again shortly. Thank you very much.