AXA Group

AXA Group is a leading financial services firm which primarily operates in Western Europe, North America, the Asia Pacific region, and the Middle East, and Africa. The group is a conglomerate of several independently run businesses operating within the AXA umbrella, but according to the laws and regulations of their operational regions.

Founded in 1816 as Mutuelle de L’assurance contre L’incendie, the company acquired Compagnie Parisienne de Garantie in 1978 and became Mutuelles Unies. The name AXA was adopted in 1985, chosen because its can be pronounced easily by people who speak any language.

The company offers a range of insurance products, including life and savings, property and casualty, and health. Its products include motor, household, property and general liability insurance, banking, savings vehicles, and other investment-based products for personal/individual and commercial/group customers, as well as health, protection, and retirement products for individual or professional customers.

The company also provides savings, protection, and health products, including whole life insurance, medical cover, and term life insurance; and other protection and health products, such as disability, cancer, and critical illness. In addition, it offers life and savings, and health products including term life, universal life, endowment, unit-linked, group term insurance, and hospital cash products and investment products, as well as individual and group retirement products, and employee benefits.

Further, the company is involved in diversified investment management products, such as managed accounts, hedge funds, mutual funds, and other investment products to individual investors, private clients, and various institutional clients; management of retail mutual funds for individual investors; management of investments on behalf of institutional clients; and fundamental research, quantitative services, and brokerage-related services in equities and listed options for institutional investors.

AXA has a diversified innovation strategy, with several pillars including a Corporate Venture Capital Arm (with both a early-stage and, as of 2019, a late-stage fund) , Innovation Lab and a Startup Studio. The Group set up a Digital Partnerships team in 2015, instructing them to operate with a ‘fail-fast’ mindset.

On March 5th, 2018, AXA officially acquired global P&C and Reinsurance firm, XL Group, for $15.3B, turning AXA into the third-largest specialty writer of insurance worldwide. Following the announcement, the pair unveiled their plans to unify XL Group operations, AXA Corporate Solutions and AXA Art, with a clear focus on large P&C commercial lines and specialty risks.

In 2019, the Group announced the launch if three new AI-powered chatbots - Harry, Bert and Lenny - to help its customer property claims, commercial property and liability teams in their administrative work. According to the insurer, the bots will work in conjunction with existing employees, saving them over 18,000 hours of repetitive work each year.

On January 1st, 2019, AXA launched a new company, AXA Next. This new company was created with a single objective: to build new services and business models, going beyond insurance coverage and becoming a true partner to AXA customers. The new structure allows AXA to benefit from a dedicated organisation and resources as well as new ways of looking at business developments.

On Chinese New Year, (Feb. 5th, 2019), AXA launched a mini-program, integrated into WeChat Go, offering travel insurance to their 1B+ monthly active users. WeChat Go is a mobile application dedicated to international tourism.

In October 2020, AXA announced plans to merge its three healthcare brands - AXA PPP healthcare, Health-on-Line, and its employee support service, Health Services/ICAS UK - into one: AXA Health. The company hope the move will drive innovation and speed up the development of new wellbeing propositions.

In that same month, AXA Germany expanded its partnership with ING and launched a new digital bancassurance offering comprising of liability, home contents and building insurance. The new product has 80% fewer questions, and provides flexible, needs-based coverage that can be cancelled at any time.

In November 2020 it was revealed that subsidiary AXA XL was to receive €1bn from parent AXA to bolster its capital position after being hit by Covid claims and costs from natural disasters.

AXA revealed its strategic plan and key financial targets for 2021-23 in December 2020 - the company plans to focus on improved underwriting, a simplified customer experience in Europe, and expand on health. In the same month, Gulf Insurance Group (GIG) revealed plans to acquire AXA’s operations in the Gulf region, which will be sold for a total cash consideration of $269m. Thomas Buberl, CEO of AXA, explained that the move is part of AXA's 'simplification journey'.

In January 2021 AXA, through its Belgium-based arm, partnered with CMT to launch an updated version of AXA DriveCoach, which enables users to receive an analysis and score based on behaviours such as acceleration, braking and speeds, with good scores translates to 20-50% discounts on some insurance products. The latest update automatically records when the user begins to drive, and if the phone screen is touched whilst the vehicle is in motion, the score is immediately affected.

In April 2021 AXA announced a partnership with Microsoft to build a new digital healthcare platform of health and wellbeing services, after successfully completing a pilot in Germany and Italy. The range of services offered will include a self-assessment and prevention tool, a medical concierge, a teleconsultation interface, a digital document vault, home care services (e.g. medicine delivery) or a directory of healthcare professionals. The service will launch in select European countries in 2022, before expanding worldwide.

In July 2021 it was revealed AXA was partnering with Chinese healthtech insurance platform QingSong to explore insurance education, innovation & health services. QuinSong has become a trusted platform for 30 million Chinese families since its launch.