(December 3, 2013) — Mark Versey, CIO of insurer Friends Life, has taken on a new role as director of client solutions at Aviva Investors, aiCIO can reveal.
Reporting directly to CEO Euan Munro, the role will see Versey offer CIO support and services to clients of Aviva Investors, the biggest of which is the wider Aviva group.
After initially focussing on delivering the strong investment performance required from the wider Aviva Group businesses, it is understood Versey’s role will then build on this capability to offer an outsourced CIO capability to Aviva Investors’ external clients.
A spokesman for Aviva Investors told aiCIO: “Mark will work closely with our new CEO, Euan Munro, to further strengthen our investment proposition, support our internal clients and grow the business externally, as we embed our focus on investment solutions that deliver income with low volatility.
“That we have attracted someone of Mark’s calibre to this role is a strong indicator of the positive direction of our business.”
Versey had spent a little more than three years leading the investment charge at Friends Life, and was involved in the insurer setting up its own asset management arm in 2012.
Prior to this, he was CIO for AXA UK, and held various roles at Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Bank.
In his Friends Life role, Versey oversaw two major pools of assets—the legacy with-profits funds and the annuity business—in addition to the Friends Life Investment asset management arm. The total number of assets he was responsible for was £95 billion.
In 2013, Versey made it onto aiCIO’s Power 100 list for the first time, entering at number 45.
The appointment comes five months after Aviva Investors poached Standard Life Investments’ GARS guru Euan Munro to become its CEO.
It also occurs just days after the asset manager announced it was cutting 6% of its global staff, including a number of senior managers, as part of a restructuring exercise.
Among the approximately 60 staff leaving the firm are the head of credit Mark Wauton and the head of equity solutions Iyad Farah, two sources close to the company told Reuters in November.
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