Aviva installs new chairman and CEO at Friends Provident

INSURANCE giant Aviva has tapped two insiders to take over as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of its freshly bought subsidiary Friends Provident International (FPI), replacing the financial solutions firm's outgoing executive chairman.

FPI said in a press release on Tuesday that Chris Wei, Aviva's CEO of global life insurance and chairman of Aviva's Asia arm, will become its new chairman while its new CEO will be Khor Hock Seng, who has been CEO of Aviva Asia since 2013.

Both of the new appointments take effect on July 1 and will be extensions of Mr Wei's and Mr Khor's responsibilities at Aviva, FPI added.

The two men are taking over from FPI's executive chairman John Van Der Wielen, who will step down on June 30 but will stay on the firm's board as a non-executive director.

Mr Wei joined Aviva in 2014 and was previously CEO of OCBC's insurance arm Great Eastern Holdings. "Aviva Asia and FPI are largely complementary and today's appointments confirm our intention to bring both businesses closer together," he said in a statement.

London-based Aviva snagged FPI when it inked a deal to acquire FPI's parent, British financial firm Friends Life Group, for £5.6 billion (S$11.7 billion) in March this year. Aviva has already announced plans to shut down three offices in the United Kingdom to cut costs, according to media reports.