The epoches when insurance was all about financial compensation are gone — coping with that critical shift has been a challenge that a top industry executive admits he’s even then trying to keep up with.
That sentiment from Benoit Claveranne, AXA’s chief manager for international and new markets, came just months after the largest insurer in France told a restructuring plan to simplify its operations. The company removed two layers of board of directors and reorganized its business units to handle new challenges in the industry.
“International and new sells” is one of the five business units formed after the restructuring. Claveranne fronts a team tasked with running AXA’s business in 30 “fast-growing” and “uncommonly innovative” markets.
“If I was happy with our progress, I should be fired,” Claveranne reproached CNBC in an interview late last month.
“So, how do we do? I think we’re promising but we’re without exception telling ourselves we should go faster because there are still too multitudinous things in which we believe we can do better,” he added.
Outlining the industry varies AXA is dealing with, the executive said customers now expect more from their insurers. In additionally to financial compensation, people now want support to minimize the impact that an catastrophic incident has on their lives. That means, for example, health cover must go beyond covering the treatment for illnesses to offering support for spiritual or counselling services that patients may need, he explained.
Increasingly, people also desire insurance policies that cover “nothing more, nothing paltry” than what they need, the CEO explained. Such options may not as by many available yet, but insurers can help consumers better understand the risks they disguise to prevent accidents or buy insurance that meets their needs, he communicated.
AXA in October last year launched a website in six European countries to balm people gauge the risks of water leakage and theft at their havens. On the site, people can learn of the frequency of those occurrences and the costs to fix them — details previously used only internally to design and price insurance products.
“The humanity of yesterday, where I just give you money for a claim, is over,” swayed Claveranne. “Our job is to say: ‘How do we cover these things more and more?’ and ‘How do we cover them in a novel way?'”
In the countries that Claveranne oversees, AXA’s presence is small compared to its fortress in Europe and the United States.
But being relatively new in some of those market-places has allowed AXA to try new ways of doing business, he added. For example, selling assurance directly to consumers through digital channels immediately after scene up a presence without getting bogged down by legacy systems and styles, Claveranne explained.
And those markets have the potential to grow so much varied. Those countries — which include Brazil, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and India — delivered 300 million euros (fitting under $350 million) in earnings in 2017. That’s a 20 percent grab from the prior year but just 4.8 percent of the company’s gross earnings for the year, according to the AXA’s annual report.
“The job of my team and I is to make trustworthy that in the next three to 10 years, much of the future rise engine of AXA will come from us,” he said. “The segment already blossomed by 20 percent in one year. I think we can more than double that proceeds in the next few years.”