PEOPLE & CULTURE PULSE · ISSUE 3 · MARCH 2026
A monthly benchmark for People & Culture teams: the talking points that matter and how your culture compares, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
Pay-gap reporting season is a reminder that reward is about perception as much as numbers. March brought the slowest regular pay growth in more than five years, free share awards for more than 13,000 Admiral staff and an £8.1bn takeover of Beazley by Zurich. Our insurance data this month shows that pay sentiment in the sector held steady in 2025, but overall culture scores slipped at most of the large insurers we track.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
What happened: ONS figures on 19 March showed regular pay growth of 3.8% for November 2025 to January 2026, the lowest in over five years, with private sector pay up 3.3%. Real regular pay grew 0.5%, unemployment held at 5.2% and vacancies fell to 721,000.
The Deltabase lens: Insurance employees' view of pay held steady. The median Pay & Rewards score across seven large insurers was +26.1% in both 2024 and 2025, but the range was wide, from +33.7% at Travelers to −8.5% at Admiral in 2025.
So what: With real pay growth thin, perceived fairness carries more weight. Compare your Pay & Rewards score with peers before the pay round, not after.
What happened: Admiral reported 2025 pre-tax profit up 16% to £957.9m on 5 March, and more than 13,000 employees will receive free shares worth up to £1,800 each through its staff profit share scheme.
The Deltabase lens: Admiral's culture data tells a more complicated story. Its NSS fell from −4.9% in 2024 to −10.7% in 2025 (235 and 163 reviews), and its Pay & Rewards score of −8.5% was the only negative pay score among the seven insurers we track.
So what: Generous schemes do not automatically change how people feel about pay. Clear communication on how awards work, and how base pay compares, matters as much as the award itself.
What happened: On 2 March, Zurich agreed to buy Beazley for £8.1bn, offering 1,310p per share in cash, a 59.8% premium to the undisturbed share price. Beazley chief executive Adrian Cox said the aim was to build "a US$15 billion, global specialty leader".
The Deltabase lens: Beazley falls below our 100-review threshold, so we do not score it. Among the large insurers we do track, Agility & Bureaucracy is already a weak spot: AIG fell from −50.0% to −84.6% in 2025 and Chubb from −78.6% to −88.6%.
So what: For People teams on either side of a deal, Agility & Bureaucracy and Supportive Leadership are the early-warning scores to watch through integration.
2 of 7: large insurers in our set improved their NSS in 2025, and the median fell from +2.0% to −1.1%.
| Insurer | 2024 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travelers | +13.1% | +22.4% | +9.3 pts |
| Aviva | +4.5% | +9.7% | +5.2 pts |
| AIG | +2.0% | +1.1% | −0.9 pts |
| Chubb | −1.2% | −8.1% | −6.9 pts |
| Admiral | −4.9% | −10.7% | −5.8 pts |
| Median (7 insurers) | +2.0% | −1.1% | −3.1 pts |
Source: Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), 2024 and 2025. Median and count across Aviva, Legal & General, Admiral, AIG, Chubb, MetLife and Travelers. Hiscox and Beazley are excluded (fewer than 100 reviews a year).
Two UK insurers with the same pay score but different cultures. Both scored +30.1% on Pay & Rewards in 2025, with Legal & General up sharply from +12.3% and Aviva up from +26.7%. Overall, Aviva's NSS more than doubled from +4.5% to +9.7% (342 and 350 reviews), while Legal & General's was already negative at −3.7% in 2024 and fell further in 2025 (197 and 196 reviews). The difference is leadership: Aviva's Supportive Leadership score improved to −2.8%, against −29.6% at Legal & General.
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Sources: ShareCompare (2 March 2026); Employee Benefits (9 March 2026); FE News (19 March 2026); Deltabase Culture data.