Aviva’s remarkable revival leaves one big question: What next?

The Aviva Plc logo inside the offices containing their headquarters at 80 Fenchurch Street in the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, March, 5, 2024.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThis report is from this week's CNBC UK Exchange newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.The dispatchFew turnarounds in corporate Britain this century match the one achieved in the last six years at Aviva.The U.K.'s second-largest insurer by stock market value — Prudential is at No. 1 — had been a serial disappointment since its creation in May 2000.That partly reflects Aviva's history. It was formed by the merger of Norwich Union, a 203-year-old life company that until 1997 was owned by its members, with that of CGU, a business formed in 1998 from the combination of General Accident and Commercial Union, two more insurers each dating back more than a century. That combination, of essentially three entities, brought complexity and sprawl. Richard Harvey, the CEO who oversaw the merger, left in 2007 to undertake charity work in Africa. His successor, Andrew Moss, focused initially on offloading peripheral activities — which, bizarrely, included the British School of Motoring and the Auto Win...