As we usher in AXA Tianping 3.0 Era centering “Diversified products, Quality driven, Sustainable growth”, all business lines have obtained strong growth momentum. In this month newsletter, the Chief Commercial Officer Shaw Zeng will introduce the commercial business updates, 2022 goals, the team’s competitive edge, partnerships and collaboration with branches.
Robust Growth
In 2021, the commercial business recorded profitable growth with an YOY 41.2% increase in GWP, far exceeding the market average. Branches’ commercial business has made a historic breakthrough in GWP and large-scale projects, with healthy interaction with each other. Branches are on the right track to build their own commercial teams of sales, operations and claims, as well as operation mechanisms.
2021 Highlight
Five years after the Tianjin Port explosion, the team has taken immediate measures, followed closely with clients who suffered significant losses during the incident and negotiated with multi-parties despite various setbacks across geographies. And finally in 2021, we successfully pursued the Tianjin Port explosion Insurance recoveries and gaining the most subrogation fees ever for AXA Tianping – 113 million yuan.
Higher Goals
In 2022, the team will continue to strive for profitable growth, with a focus on developing key clients and strategic distribution partners and strengthening branch capabilities. In the meanwhile, opportunities to deepen the cooperation with GI Hub and AXA XL will be further explored.
For branches, our strategy is to tailor make solutions to cater to local clients’ diversified needs. For example, in Shanghai we will focus on foreign companies, while Chinese high-tech enterprises in Shenzhen.
Market Opportunities
We saw a rapid growth and great potential of the insurance market despite the pandemic. The prospect is much broader when it comes to third tier and fourth-tier cities in China, where AXA outruns other foreign peers with the nationwide branch network.
In the meantime, the country’s outward direct investment (ODI) activities and One Belt One Road initiative also provide plenty of opportunities for us to develop the RF business and cross sale.
AXA Advantage
We are proud to have built a comprehensive infrastructure and a professional team to lay a solid foundation. Working with all branches, we can provide top-notch services to local clients.
As a world leading insurer, the team is serving over 5600 corporate clients, having established a firm and long-term relationship across the market. Anchored in China, we look forward to bringing more relevant world-class solutions to more local clients.
We have kicked off the Rosy Start program in the end of 2021 and now halfway through it with the concerted efforts from branch and center colleagues. As of February 17, the target achievement rate reached average 61.1.% for all lines. Congratulations to the branches and centers on top of the list! We look forward to higher performance and success rates for the first quarter.
Branches and centers with higher achievement rates will be entitled the Premium Travel Reward in Macau.
As LFC’s official partner, AXA will run the LFC Football Training Camp in the summer in Beijing with LFC, to provide certified courses for young players in China to be coached “The Liverpool Way” this summer in Beijing. Branches and centers with higher achievement rates in the Rosy Start program will be offered free quotas to the camp.
We have been involving in governmental conferences actively in the past year. Lately on January 15, AXA Group Chairman Denis Duverne was invited by Mr. Lou Jiwei, Chairman of Board of GAMF and former Minister of Finance and Mr. Bai Chong’en, Chair of the GAMF Executive Committee and dean of Tsinghua SEM, to the Global Asset Management Forum Shanghai Summit and to discuss the topic of the New Economic and Financial Landscape in Global Recovery.
Denis joined the remotely from Paris and delivered the speech on the challenges and opportunities COVID has brought to financial institutions to cooperate.
As Denis said, business, government and community leaders must work together to build climate resilience, and financial players have a key role to play individually and collectively. In this spirit, AXA has initiated an alliance – Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), whose goal is to contribute to climate neutrality via the insurance reinsurance coverage we provide to our customers. Insurance is also the key to build resilience development, to increase people’s capacity to face hardship without falling back into poverty. In this front, Insurance Development Forum (IDF) which Denis chairs will provide risk and resilience analytics to 55 of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries.
The Global Asset Management Forum (GAMF) is a non-governmental global think tank initiated and founded by School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Sun Yefang Economic Science Foundation and China Wealth Management 50 Forum (CWM50) amidst China increasingly opening up financially, with a view to promoting international dialogue in economic and financial areas, enhancing mutual understanding and reciprocal cooperation, and boosting development of the financial industry.
AXA Tianping has launched the e-CNY (China’s digital currency) premium payment function on January 6, 2022, and successfully issued the first e-CNY insurance policy. Running at the forefront among the industry in e-CNY payment technology, we believe the new function will help drive the company’s digital development.
Thanks to IT team’s continuous efforts in scenario research and communicating with China Construction Bank, we successfully established the e-account, completed the development, joint debugging and test in the end of 2021. The service was piloted in lifestyle and health products on the launch day and the first policy was issued for household property insurance.
Next, we will continue to be customer-centric, and further explore the function of the e-CNY receipt and payment of premiums, so that e-CNY can be used in AXATP more extensively and the customer experience will be more comfortable.
On January 21st, we held the year-end AXA Star employee award ceremony and celebrated the Year of Tiger in Shanghai Ruiming headquarter office, also joined by Shanghai Jinqiao headquarter office and branch representatives.
Thanks to the HR team for organizing this incredible event to recognize our colleagues who exhibited exemplary commitment toward the transformation goal and lived the AXA Values. Altogether 22 AXA colleagues from headquarter and branches are entitled to individual awards of AXA Stars of the Year in Transformation, Customer First, Integrity, Courage and One AXA, 9 teams won the CEO team awards of AXA Stars. Congratulations to those colleagues and thank you all for your contribution to the company growth.
The celebration event was also full of fun with people’s dances and shows, and luck draws. I hope you all spent a wonderful time together. And may the year of Tiger bring you prosperity and good health!
In 2021, we have made remarkable achievements in brand building, business development, social responsibility, insight, product innovation, digital innovation and other aspects, and have been recognized and praised by authoritative media. In the past year, the company recorded 4,290 media reports in corporate communications, with an advertising value of RMB185,812,136 and 274,464,305,895 reach of coverage.
2021 was a year of achievement and recognition for AXA Tianping. Together, we won over 25 accolades from Shanghai headquarter and branches.
These awards are awarded by authoritative national media, industry associations, insurance organizations and local government departments, and are highly recognized for the company’s transformation achievements, covering many dimensions such as brand influence, digital innovation, social responsibility, health strategy, employer brand and risk management.
Please join me in reviewing the achievements of 2021 and hope to make your business development efforts more powerful.
The year of Tiger is approaching. How joyful it was to celebrate the gala dinner with you at the headquarters office, filled with happiness, love and festive vibrations! At this occasion, on behalf of the management committee, I am very happy to present you the year-end video, wishing you and you families a happy new year full of prosperity, abundance and success!
Previously on 20 January, at the occasion of the 2021 Branch Performance and 2022 Business Boosting Conference around the theme of “Transformation to One AXA”, we have announced to embark on the 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping with a focus on “Diversified products, Quality driven, Sustainable growth”. Our Vice Executive President, Liancheng ZHOU is about to share with you his reflection and strategy on product design, distribution management and innovation a bit later in this month’s newsletter.
Later at the gala dinner, our AXA stars and AXA brilliant teams got awarded for their whole year’s devotion and dedication at work, which is the perfect reflection of AXA values: Customer First, Integrity, Courage, One AXA, to not only show our gratitude but also to amplify their excellent performance to the whole company.
Looking back, 2021 has been a year of milestone results across all business lines: up till November 2021, the YOY growth of health, retail and commercial has respectively reached 73.8%、44.8% and 61.5%, greatly surpassing average market growth rate; it has also been a year of industry awards, highly recognizing our great work in brand awareness, digital innovation, corporate responsibility, health protection, customer service and risk management, thanks to your collective efforts and professionalism. I strongly believe that this will further encourage us to empower more and more Chinese families to “Protect Their Passion and Go Further with Confidence” moving forward. 2022, let us make it great together!
The year of Tiger is approaching. How joyful it was to celebrate the gala dinner with you at the headquarters office, filled with happiness, love and festive vibrations! At this occasion, on behalf of the management committee, I am very happy to present you the year-end video, wishing you and you families a happy new year full of prosperity, abundance and success!
Previously on 20 January, at the occasion of the 2021 Branch Performance and 2022 Business Boosting Conference around the theme of “Transformation to One AXA”, we have announced to embark on the 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping with a focus on “Diversified products, Quality driven, Sustainable growth”. Our Vice Executive President, Liancheng ZHOU is about to share with you his reflection and strategy on product design, distribution management and innovation a bit later in this month’s newsletter.
Later at the gala dinner, our AXA stars and AXA brilliant teams got awarded for their whole year’s devotion and dedication at work, which is the perfect reflection of AXA values: Customer First, Integrity, Courage, One AXA, to not only show our gratitude but also to amplify their excellent performance to the whole company.
Looking back, 2021 has been a year of milestone results across all business lines: up till November 2021, the YOY growth of health, retail and commercial has respectively reached 73.8%、44.8% and 61.5%, greatly surpassing average market growth rate; it has also been a year of industry awards, highly recognizing our great work in brand awareness, digital innovation, corporate responsibility, health protection, customer service and risk management, thanks to your collective efforts and professionalism. I strongly believe that this will further encourage us to empower more and more Chinese families to “Protect Their Passion and Go Further with Confidence” moving forward. 2022, let us make it great together!
（供中国大陆区以外同事观看,For AXA colleagues outside mainland China)
On 20 January, the 2021 Branch Performance and 2022 Business Boosting Conference took place in Shanghai, announcing the 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping with a focus on “Diversified products, Quality driven, Sustainable growth” to continue strengthening motor, accelerating Health, and developing commercial. Liancheng ZHOU, Executive Vice President of AXA Tianping has shared his reflection and insights on distribution management and distribution innovation per his understanding of 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping.
Deep Dive into 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping
Quality-driven and Sustainable growth has always been at the core of AXA Tianping’s operation and is what makes the 2.0 strategy and 3.0 strategy consistent. The transformation journey, from a volume-driven, mono-liner business model to a value-driven, multi-liner business model has a test to our overall distribution, underwriting and claims capabilities. Since the 2.0 Era, AXA Tianping has joined other insurers to pivot business from motor to health. Some major progress has been witnessed in distribution cooperation and talents training but need to be further reflected on the branch level. The new era requests that we reinforce our sales capabilities to provide value-oriented services to customers, which explains the three – tiered focus of 3.0 Era: “Diversified products, Quality driven, Sustainable growth”.
The concept of “3.0 Era” is the creation of our integrated corporate purpose, brand promise and development strategy. We expand and diversity our product portfolio, covering motor and non-motor products to seek new business opportunities by upgrading our existing pipelines such as EB and Commercial; we strategize to make our distribution channels hybrid, incorporating traditional agents, distribution, digital and call center; we continue to optimize our infrastructure and backend support for a better quality control and a more refined management process, through a series of trainings, improvement plans and monitoring; we strengthen our sales and distributions’ capabilities for a long-term growth and sustainable development; we keep investing in team building, distribution cooperation, and mechanism set-up, focusing on risk control and compliance.
Of course, there will be opportunities and challenges, in face of the 3.0 era, but we have clearly put forward a more comprehensive development strategy that guides our business optimally. We are confident to change the track for greater glories in 2022.
Reviewing 2021
Let us now review our milestones of 2021 so that we have a better outlook on 2022 strategy.
We have initiated our distribution cooperation in the year of 2021 and has empowered branches in this field. Shandong branch for instance has significantly increased their operation and has optimized their organization as a result.
In addition, the health insurance premium platform has been steadily improved, with a three-fold increase at the end of the year compared with the beginning of the year, exceeding the 80-million-yuan mark in the fourth quarter. The annualized premiums of seven institutions including Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang exceeded 10 million. The source of premiums is mainly the traditional agents, accounting for about 77.8%. The pivot, from mono-liner sales to multi-liner sales, reflects precisely the change from sales driven by rigid demand to sales driven by growing unmet needs, which explains the core values that we request our team to possess, which are: strategy, execution, and delivery.
Expecting 2022
Moving to 2022, the industry is expected to enter a better chapter under a new regulatory landscape, especially for P&C insurers who might benefit from a more rational industry growth rate and a decline of operational costs as a result of the motor deregulation, initiated a year ago. The new energy vehicle projects will bring new opportunities that encourage the industry players to seek new patterns of cooperation, breaking the status quo of the general loss of new energy vehicle insurance. Since September 2021, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the country reached 20%. This is a market we must enter. A dedicated workforce has been set up to conduct research and planning on the business development of new energy vehicles.
We will continue to expand health and will officially open up the EB market as a breakthrough point, developing employee welfare business while building a series of supporting systems such as sales, underwriting, claims, system services, etc., and to strengthen the frontline with professional skills, deep insight and understanding of customers. The employee welfare product is not a simple insurance product, but rather, a solution to customers’ pain points.
Under the pandemic situation, customers’ ability to purchase and consume can vary, which will directly affect the expansion of long-term critical illness insurance business. However, PPP products (Huiminbao Insurance for instance) has a great chance to maintain its strong growth momentum. We must firmly grasp the market opportunities, and continue to deepen the distribution management, grasp the development trend of customer purchasing behavior, and actively explore new digital marketing models.
Transforming to One AXA
Empowered by our strong brand and supported by the sophisticated resources from Greater China, we are confident enough for a successful transformation despite the challenges on this journey, by working together towards the same goal, for we are united as one.
No progress is made without passion, and no transformation can be realized without your collective efforts. Dedication, devotion, courage and confidence – these are what will make a great debut of 3.0 Era of AXA Tianping, and what will ensure a smooth operation of this transformation journey.
