AXA’s Manchester Branch takes up residence in the heart of the city’s financial district with lease of iconic 82 King Street

AXA Commercial Lines and Personal Intermediary is to relocate its Manchester branch to the prestigious 82 King Street building in the heart of the city’s financial district.

30 January 2015

Posted in People

The move, in which AXA has invested over £500,000, is part of a broader modernisation of the insurer’s regional branch network and focus on creating a more entrepreneurial environment in which to trade with local brokers.

AXA is leasing over 6,000 square feet of prime real estate with the 64 branch employees able to take advantage state of the art facilities and technology. AXA has also created a dedicated broker trading facility in the office to help facilitate renewal workshops and business surgeries.

King Street is the historic home of finance in Manchester, with No 82 once housing the city’s branch of the Bank of England, and it retains that pre-eminent position with a number of high profile financial institutions, professional firms (including local broker Caunce O’Hara) and FTSE Top 100 companies currently in residence.

Anne Harrison, Manchester Branch Manager, said that the new facilities would help create a more entrepreneurial approach to doing business, in line with the brokers AXA deals with.

We are really excited to be making this move. It’s a huge investment but one that I have no doubt will have a direct, positive impact upon our business here in Manchester. Insurers tend to have a reputation for being stuffy and corporate but when brokers come to visit us, they will see that the new office space better reflects our commitment to become more entrepreneurial in our thinking and actions.

We are now in the centre of Manchester’s vibrant financial district which gives us the ideal base from which to trade with our brokers across the region and the state-of-the-art facilities to conduct business when brokers want to visit us. This is about working smarter, more efficiently and gives us the perfect platform to tackle our 2020 strategy.

AXA has made a commitment to invest in its regional operations and this is yet more proof that we are making a tangible difference to our local presence and making it as easy as possible for brokers to trade with us.

Anne Harrison, Manchester Branch Manager at AXA UK

AXA will take up full residency at 82 King Street on 2 February 2015.

The Manchester branch move follows similar significant investment in the Glasgow, Newcastle and Bristol operations in 2014.