Heather Smith

With a business and economics degree I have a commercial marketing career in IT and primarily Financial Services spanning 20+ years.

I started my professional career with NCR Ltd in London on the classic graduate programme ensuring a solid grounding in the Sales and Marketing disciplines

I then joined Norwich Union Healthcare now Aviva as part of a business start up developing the marketing model and plan for a well know brand coming into a defined category against very well and established businesses. A marketing dream and a great challenge.

I then moved to the direct side of the general insurance business where I led sales and marketing competing in the highly commoditised price driven motor and home markets. I developed real strength and depth on the power of digital marketing ensuring the whole end to end offer and customer experience was integrated.

I had a year working on the rebrand from Norwich Union to Aviva. Reported by The Times as a model in best practice.

For the last few years I have been leading our direct digital businesses across the full composite including the development of My Aviva single customer portal and app and the Aviva Drive app. This has demonstrated the value and strength of the composite and shown our digital capability leading to Aviva being the Digital Insurer of the Year in 2014 and British Insurance award winner for digital in 2015.