AXA - Be Life Confident

AXA today announces changes to the organisational structure within its life and general insurance companies that will give both businesses a sharper market focus and closer alignment to customer needs.

The restructuring in AXA Life and AXA Insurance will see the establishment of a number of separate market-focused business units, each of which will have its own business leader with direct accountability for profitability. 

The new developments support AXA's 2012 ambition of becoming the preferred company and a market leader in each of its chosen markets.

Paul Evans, chief executive at AXA Life, said;

"By empowering our people and giving them accountability for revenues and profits within each key market area, we will focus our knowledge and expertise on those key market areas and create businesses that can bring new propositions to market more quickly. This will bring us much closer to our customers and distributors because we will be more closely aligned to their needs."

Peter Hubbard, chief executive at AXA Insurance, said;

"Our ambition is to be a market leader in our chosen markets and to achieve this we have to be bolder and more entrepreneurial in our approach to meeting customer and distributor demands.

"Moving to the new structure will give a greater degree of autonomy for each of the business units and enable greater speed to market to take advantage of opportunities as they arise."

AXA Life structure

The newly created Wealth Management business is a major part of the new structure. In an expanded role, Mike Kellard¹ will remain as CEO of Winterthur's high net worth business, while additionally taking charge of AXA's wealth management businesses including the Individual Pension and Investment business of AXA Life and its market-leading International business based in Isle of Man. The underlying businesses will be differentiated and will retain separate Winterthur and AXA brands and market positioning to deliver a unique and powerful proposition in the UK. Reporting to Paul Evans, Mike has additionally been asked to form a new fund management proposition to differentiate AXA in the IFA market place.

As a reflection of the strategic importance of Mike Kellard's enlarged role we are delighted to announce that he has been appointed to the Executive Committee of AXA UK. His appointment takes effect from 1 January 2007 .

The Corporate business, formed from the proposed integration of Winterthur and AXA Life's Corporate Benefits teams, will be led by Steve Edwards and will focus on the important employee benefits market accessed via employee benefits consultants and corporate IFAs, where AXA has ambitious plans to become one of the biggest players in the market. Steve will also have responsibility for building AXA's presence in the bancassurance market.

AXA recognised the importance of the protection market by launching the innovative AXA Protection Account at the end of 2004 and Graham Harvey will now lead the Protection business as AXA continues to build on its presence in this area with the intention of becoming a leading protection provider.

David Hynam will continue as Chief Operating Officer and will additionally focus upon managing the value of in-force policies for those products no longer actively marketed.

Steve Edwards, Graham Harvey and David Hynam will also report to Paul Evans, CEO of AXA Life.

Beyond AXA Life, Paul Evans will continue to be responsible for the development of the Wrap business, led by Paul McMahon, and for the Advisory Services business, led by John Simmonds, which recently completed the acquisition of the independent advisor firm Thinc.

AXA Insurance structure

AXA Insurance will comprise an insurance company and four business units. The insurance company will be headed by Guy Stouls, Insurance Managing Director reporting to Peter Hubbard, CEO AXA Insurance. Each business unit will have a General Manager who will report directly to Mark Cliff, Markets Managing Director who will also report to Peter Hubbard. The business units have been structured to facilitate growth and customer focus in distribution.

The Corporate Partners business will be led by Anthony Middle as General Manager and will focus on our partnerships with affinities and brands. AXA Insurance currently holds the number four position in the corporate partner market and will continue to improve by putting customers at the core of proposition development.

We have been building our position in Personal Lines Intermediary and Michael Keating will continue to lead this market segment as PLI General Manager.

Gary Stott will lead the Commercial Lines Intermediary channel as General Manager. The new structure will facilitate the ongoing growth and development of this billion pound revenue channel to help us achieve our ambition to be number one in the SME segment.

AXA Solutions, our SME direct proposition will be led by David Aiston as General Manager. AXA Insurance is currently the largest SME direct provider and this business unit creation will lead to a greater focus of maintaining our market leading position.

Andy Fairchild has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer, AXA Insurance and will report directly to Peter Hubbard.

The new way of operating will be introduced on January 1 2007 and will be fully implemented over a phased period of approximately 12 months.

- Ends -