Aviva customers in £470m payout

The payouts should be with policyholders from November

About 805,000 Aviva policy holders are to share £470m from the company after choosing to accept a special payment.

Aviva said that in the "reattribution" process for two of its with-profits funds, about 87% of the one million savers involved voted - 96% accepting.

Most are being offered between £214 and £1,230 to relinquish any future claim to a share of surplus money in the funds that hold their investments.

Those who voted to accept the deal will receive their money from November.

Aviva's chief executive Mark Hodges said the deal was fair to both policyholders and also shareholders.

"We've always made sure that customers had a choice of whether they wished to accept the offer, depending on what was best for their personal circumstances, and we believe this offer is good for 99% of policyholders so it's great to see that so many customers have voted 'yes'," he said.

Surplus cushion

The total payout is worth £470m to the investors, much lower than initially suggested in 2008, after the slump in share and property values experienced during the past year.

The money is being offered as a way of resolving the ownership of the funds' so-called "inherited estate".

This is the money that has been built up as a surplus cushion in two of Aviva's huge with-profits funds over many decades.

These investments are used to pay people with endowment, pension and other with-profits investment policies.

The two funds affected are the CGNU Life and CULAC.

Those who voted not to accept the offer, or failed to vote at all, will receive nothing but will keep their entitlement to any future redistribution of their funds' "inherited estate".

Aviva has said that any such payout is highly unlikely.