Aviva Investors (formerly several separate businesses) is an asset management company and is part of the Aviva group. It has global assets under management of over £274 billion, including:
- equities (£54 billion of UK and international equities, accounting for almost 2% of the UK stock market)
- fixed income (£59 billion of fixed-income assets, bonds and money market instruments)
- property investments (£24 billion of UK and European property assets, making it the largest property fund managers in Europe)
- cash (£12.5 billion)
- other (£3 billion).
Aviva Investors employs over 1,250 staff, including 400 investment managers, research analysts, economists and strategists. The majority of employees are based in London. In addition, companies in the AI group have offices in Mumbai, Des Moines, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Manhattan Beach, Boston, Dublin, Luxembourg, Melbourne, Warsaw, Milan and Madrid.
The London unit, previously known as Morley, was founded in 1971 as Geoffrey Morley and Partners, bought by Globe Investment in 1988, sold to Commercial Union and became CU Morley in 1990. Rebranded as Morley Fund Management and became the London-based asset management division of CGU in 1999 following the merger with General Accident. Morley merged with Norwich Union Investment Management in 2000 following the merger of CGU with Norwich Union. It claims to be the largest UK-owned active fund manager.
The Central Bank of Ireland fined Aviva Investors in July 2011 for failing to have proper controls and procedures surrounding the safeguarding of client assets.