Aviva has rolled out a new flood-preparedness app to selected home insurance customers in high-risk areas.
As part of its "Be Informed, Prepared and Resilient" campaign, the insurer is offering the Resilico Connect app to household policyholders whose properties it has identified as being at high risk of flooding. The tool, developed by Resilient Planit, allows users to sign up for tailored flood alerts, access practical guidance and build a personalised flood plan on their smartphone, enabling policyholders to take pre-emptive action before water reaches their property.
The initiative comes as UK flood exposure continues to rise. The Environment Agency's long-term modelling suggests that around one in four properties in England could be at risk of flooding by 2050 as climate change drives more intense rainfall, river and coastal events. Against that backdrop, large carriers are increasingly turning to digital tools to help reduce loss ratios on catastrophe-exposed books while strengthening engagement in high-risk areas.
Despite the growing threat, Aviva’s own research indicated a significant preparedness gap among homeowners, with fewer than a third knowing what action they can take to help protect their properties.
Jessica Swire, head of claims sustainability at Aviva, said that having a flood plan can help homeowners and residents to respond quickly in an emergency.
"Effective flood preparation measures, such as moving high value or sentimental items upstairs, taking up rugs, and placing appliances on stilts, can all help to reduce the impact of a flood," Swire said.
Resilico Connect lets users check localised flood risk, receive real-time alerts and work through a tailored action plan, including ongoing maintenance tasks and property adjustments.
Aviva has also warned that newly built homes are adding to the sector's long-term exposure. Its recent analysis suggests that around one in nine new homes constructed in England over the past three years has been built in an area of medium or high flood risk.
The study also indicated that about 30% of new homes built in 2024 will be at some risk of flooding by 2050, a higher proportion than for existing housing stock.
That echoes broader concerns from the Association of British Insurers, which has repeatedly called for a tighter link between planning policy and flood-risk assessment so that new housing in flood-prone locations is matched by robust resilience measures.
According to Aviva, data from the ABI shows domestic flood claims costs rose by 6% in 2025, with the average payout reaching £30,000. At that level, a single serious event can leave homes uninhabitable for months while contaminated materials are stripped out, structural elements dried and interiors reinstated, driving significant alternative accommodation and supply-chain costs.
Flood risk to vehicles is also material. In 2025, the insurer reported that 55% of flood-related motor claims resulted in total losses, while repairable vehicles generated an average claim cost of £5,872. Simple behavioural nudges, such as app-based alerts prompting drivers to move vehicles to higher ground when a warning is issued, can trim catastrophe-related attritional losses on motor portfolios.
For carriers and MGAs, these trends strengthen the economic case for investing in customer-facing resilience tools. Each incremental improvement in preparedness can translate into lower average claim costs, less volatility in quarterly results and a more sustainable underwriting appetite in flood-exposed postcodes.
Aviva is a partner of Be Flood Ready, which helps homeowners understand property flood resilience options, and it participates in Flood Re’s Build Back Better scheme. Under Build Back Better, participating insurers can offer policyholders up to £10,000 of additional resilience measures as part of a flood claim settlement, on top of the cost of like-for-like reinstatement.
Qualifying work can include flood doors and barriers, self-closing airbricks, non-return valves on drainage, raised electrical sockets and the replacement of damage-prone finishes with more resilient materials. Within that framework, Aviva offers eligible homeowners who have had a previous flood claim of £25,000 or more up to £10,000 of measures intended to reduce the impact of future events.
Both Flood Re and Build Back Better are designed to support the continued availability and affordability of cover in high-risk areas, while nudging the market away from reinstatement-only repairs towards resilience-led refurbishment. Aviva’s use of Resilico Connect sits alongside this, encouraging customers towards structured flood plans before a loss and then channelling them into resilience investments after a claim.
