Aviva’s dividend yield could climb well above its current level by 2031, according to projections based on the insurer’s own historical growth rates, with reinvested dividends doing much of the heavy lifting. Aviva (LSE: AV.) currently offers a yield of around 6%, the tenth-highest on the FTSE 100.
What the Growth Rate Projects by 2031
The trajectory depends on which growth window investors use. Over the past five years, Aviva has grown its dividend at an average of 13.35% per year. Assuming that pace holds and dividends are reinvested, the yield on an investor’s original stake would reach roughly 12.12% by 2031.
That rate looks stretched. A longer baseline tells a more conservative story: over ten years, average annual dividend growth was 6.57%, which would translate to a yield of around 9.24% by 2031 on the same reinvestment basis.
Neither projection is guaranteed. Both assume no cuts, no rebasing, and steady compounding, conditions that have not always held at Aviva. During the pandemic, one dividend payment was cancelled and the schedule was subsequently rebased. That is worth keeping in mind before extrapolating any growth rate too far forward.
What the recent results suggest, though, is that the company behind those projections is in better shape than it has been for some time. Aviva’s 2025 full-year results reported group operating profit up 25% year-on-year, general insurance premiums up 18%, and Wealth assets under management at over £230 billion, extending the company’s number-one position in that segment. Aviva said it had achieved its 2026 financial targets one year early.
The dividend figures reflected that performance. Aviva declared a total ordinary dividend of 39.3 pence per share for the full year, up 10% from 35.7 pence in 2024, with a final dividend of 26.2 pence per share. The 10% uplift comprised the company’s usual mid-single-digit growth plus an additional 5% following completion of the Direct Line transaction. From 2026 onwards, guidance reverts to mid-single-digit annual growth.
The cost of those ordinary dividends rose to £1,034 million in 2025 from £921 million in 2024, according to Aviva’s 2025 Annual Report and Accounts.
Risks and the Broader Financial Picture
For investors focused on the dividend yield, the reversion to mid-single-digit guidance from 2026 matters. It anchors expectations closer to the ten-year average than the five-year one, making the 9.24% scenario a more realistic reference point than 12.12%, though both remain projections, not commitments.
Simply Wall St estimates that analyst forecasts put the forward Aviva dividend yield at 6.5% over the next three years, against a current company yield of approximately 5.4% and a UK insurance industry average of 4.6%.
The dividend is not the only form of capital return on offer. Aviva announced a resumption of its share buyback programme at £350 million alongside the 2025 full-year results, per the Aviva investor relations page. That sits alongside the dividend as a route for the company to return cash to shareholders, and it also reduces the share count over time, which supports per-share dividend metrics.
The next scheduled interim dividend of 14.00 pence per share carries an ex-dividend date of 3 September 2026 and a payment date of 15 October 2026, according to Hargreaves Lansdown’s dividend history for Aviva.
The broader share price performance has added context. Aviva shares are up 88% since 2023, a period in which chief executive Amanda Blanc has pushed through a string of acquisitions and restructuring measures. Whether the dividend continues its above-average growth into 2031 will depend in part on how well the enlarged group, including the integrated Direct Line business, performs on premiums and margins over the next several years.
The reversion in dividend guidance to mid-single-digit growth means the compounding story from here is slower than the last five years implied. Investors tracking the yield-on-cost figure will want to watch whether that guidance holds, or whether another step-up transaction reshapes it again.