YORK insurance giant Aviva has apologised to thousands of customers after it accidentally called them 'Michael' when sending them an email.

The company said it sent out some emails last week to existing customers, which - as a result of a 'temporary technical error in our mailing template' - had mistakenly referred to the customers as ‘Michael’.

"We’ve apologised to these customers and reassured them that the only error in the email was the use of the incorrect name as a greeting," said a spokeswoman for the firm.

Some customers who were named wrongly as Michael have raised concerns about the implications of the glitch, saying that that if such errors had been made - albeit with no serious consequences -more important data about themselves could also be sent in error to others.

But the Aviva spokeswoman said there had been no issue with personal data.

"The remainder of the email and its content was correct," added the spokeswoman.

Aviva has offices in 16 countries and a global workforce of 30,000 people, with 16,000 employees in the UK, about 2,000 of whom work at offices in York.