In this month’s Dialogue with AMO, we invite Françoise Gilles, Asia Chief Risk Officer to talk about risk in insurance context, and her own experience. Françoise is from Belgium and joined AXA in Belgium eight years ago. In this stirring episode, she shows us in a fun and charming manner of what brings her to AXA Asia, and where to go and what to eat if you visit Belgium one day. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Our focus for the month of May is on growth and care, extending the momentum we’ve seen in past months. With multiple new products rolled out, we continue to accelerate the health path. This include a specially designed medical insurance for women developed by the Beijing Jinghuibao team on the Mother’s Day, and our first critical illness insurance under the new Use of Illness Definitions for Critical Illness Insurance rules taking effect in February. In parallel, we are expecting to take on board more online platforms this quarter and expand the distribution network.
Another thing I feel proud is the landing of our first CSR program – the Aiyou • AXA Playroom, to help orphans in need both physically and mentally, and bring care and love to them. As an insurer, we always have a role to play, especially for the minority groups. That’s how we live our Purpose. I wish to express my gratitude once more to teams who spared no effort in their work to undertake business activities and practice social responsibilities.
Back to the group, you may know through the AMplify that AXA Asia has expanded the mandate to include Africa, Lebanon and the remaining markets in Asia – Singapore, Malaysia, India and Vietnam. In addition, AXA Emerging Customers will be joining Asia and Africa as a business unit. Gordon Watson will lead this renewed team of experienced professionals as the CEO of AXA Asia and Africa. Congratulations and looking forward to working with the expanded team!
On May 7th, I also met the Shanghai Insurance Association (SIA) delegates together with our colleagues, Stephen Liu, Eva Huang, Xiaoyu Zhang and Siyuan Dai. It was a very insightful meeting. In the two-hour session, we discussed AXA’s business development, industry data, as well as anti-fraud experience. SIA as a bridge between the insurance industry and the government, has also gained a better understanding of AXA Tianping.
On May 9, Mother’s Day, Aiyou • AXA Playroom was officially established at the occasion of the 10th anniversary celebration of Ai You Reborn Children’s Home and the inauguration ceremony of the its new site at Shanghai Children’s Medical Center. This marked the important milestone of broadening our commonweal trials.
While AXA’s purpose is to ‘Act for Human Progress by Protecting What Matters’, children are what really matter to us. They are the flames of hope, and as long as these flames remain, our humanity is expected to make continuous progress.
The Aiyou • AXA Playroom is only the beginning of our loving and continuous dedication to children care. Moving forward, we aim to mobilize our employees as well as our partners across China to bring love and warmth to sick children and help them grow with confidence and hope.
Here, I want to express my sincere thanks to our colleagues Fengjiao Xi, Jianing Zhang and Jinglu Guo who have volunteered in this event.
Last month, I invited all of our colleagues to take part in the #Springtime photo competition, where I’ve seen many lovely photos capturing the beauty of this season from colleagues all around the country. First, I would love to share those photos with most likes and thank you all for your feedbacks. I’m glad to see that altogether 325 colleagues and 32 teams have joined his event to share the spring in their eyes. Following the result announcement yesterday, I would like to send my congratulations to Biao Chen from Chengdu Operation Center, Jianya Zhou from Zhejiang Branch and Ling Wu from Hangzhou Sub-branch, and teams including Chengdu Operation Center, Call Center, Ningbo branch and Markting & Communications!
Like these blossoms, we are charging forward with hope and confidence on the Soar to Success journey. I will share the Q1 update in this issue. Among recent achievements, the Fanhua cooperation hit the headlines. Fanhua is one of the largest independent brokerage houses in China and was listed on Nasdaq, with nearly 400,000 sales agents.
I visited Chengdu on April 12th to attend the Fanhua Summit and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with them. Together with the distribution team, health team and marketing colleagues, I spent the whole afternoon with their 2000 elite brokers across the country. Among all the companies invited, AXA Tianping is the only Property & Casualty insurer and also the only foreign-owned company. And we are the sole company to have one hour to present on stage and introduce the AXA brand and expertise.
I’ve prepared a vlog of the day to give you a clearer idea of the event and cooperation. Hope you like it.
Dialogue with AMO
I am happy to see that the first episode with Gordon was very well received by our colleagues according to the newsletter survey, with 47.37% votes! This month, we are delighted to speak to Dongjun (DJ) Choi, the Chief Strategy & Customer Officer of AXA Asia. DJ is from South Korea and has worked across multiple markets and regions including the USA, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. In addition to spearheading the strategic development office to lead AXA’s digital transformation in Asia, DJ also oversees the regional finance, health, and distribution functions.
In the dialogue, DJ also shares his impression on our team and recommendations for first-time visit in Seoul. Through the quick-fire session, you will know whether he is a Baechu Kimchi person or a Kkak-doo-ghi person.
In the meantime, upon knowing that we were holding an internal springtime photo competition, DJ sent us a selfie of him enjoying a walk along the beach with his wife. Very romantic and sweet. I bet you will all like it! Please click below video to find out more interesting facts about DJ. I hope you enjoy it！
AXATP 2021 First Townhall
On April 16th, with the help of CEO office and HR team, I hosted the first Townhall for 2021 and updated the Soar to Success result for the first quarter for all AXA Tianping colleagues. We had head quarter colleagues gathering in the open area on 11th floor at Ruiming HQ building, virtually joined by Jinqiao HQ office, all branches and call centers.
The session followed below themes:
Q1 Business overall growth
Business lines updates: health, motor, lifestyle, and commercial lines
Fanhua strategic cooperation
Industry recognition from CBIRC on low customer complaints rate
Q&A on corporate culture and AXA core values
Among all the topics, I would like to underline the importance of building the corporate and compliance culture guided by AXA’s core values – Customer First, Integrity, Courage and One AXA.
As a big fan of Chinese philosophy, I always encourage myself to behave with integrity in life and in work, as I explained during the townhall, by the two Chinese proverbs -“勿以善小而不为，勿以恶小而为之(Do good deed no matter how small it could be,and don’t do evil no matter how tiny it seems.)” and “君子坦荡荡, 小人长戚戚(Gentlemen are bighearted,a villain is always haggle over every ounce.)”. Please send me a message if you know any other old sayings that match our company culture.
For the first two topics, please find details in below stories.
Soar to Success Q1 Updates
It has been 235 days since we launched the Soar to Success program on September 7th in 2020. We are making great strides with solidarity efforts, in the four pillars – distribution, health, motor and efficiency.
In 2020, our operation profit was far beyond global target, with 29% non-motor business ratio, and a fourth-fold health upturn. In 2021 first quarter, we recorded total GWP of RMB1.42 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 4.33% in original premium income.
Below are the development details for the four pillars.
Going forward, I will keep you closely updated on STS results on quarterly basis as we did in the first townhall.
Spotlight on the Team – Board Office, Legal & Compliance
This is a new column to introduce our teams. From this month, I will invite one team each time to tell more about themselves. I hope we can build stronger connections and understandings with the persons working with you!
As we discussed during the townhall, we are creating a Compliance culture within the company. I believe everyone is willing to be with a company that has standards, norms and integrity, either for customers or employees. Compliance can protect and empower the company to go further at a steadier pace.
This month, we will start with Stephen Liu and his team – the Board Office, Legal & Compliance. For many of us, the team may seem a bit distant and legal professional may appear very serious in some stereotypes. How are them in real life? What is their daily routine in work? Let’s find out the answers in below video:
CCI France Chine’s #Executive Experience
I was very delighted to have been invited by Mr. Christoph Lauras, chairman of CCI France Chine to attend the “Executive & Experience Luncheon” on April 14, at the residence of France in Shanghai.
During the two-hour luncheon, I have met many old friends, Chinese and French, with the presence of the French ambassador, Mr. Laurent Bili; the French consul general in Shanghai, Mr. Benoit Guidee, and the chairman of CCI France Chine, Mr. Christoph Lauras. What a pleasant exchange we had on the Sino-French friendship and the prosperous future we will have! It’s a win-win game, leveraging market advantages of the two side.
I’ve always believed that both China and France have deep, profound culture as well as competitive advantages when it comes to economic cooperation. I encourage that all of us work together with our friends in France under the pandemic situation, to strengthen bilateral cooperation, complementing each other with our own advantages, so as to seek a win-win situation in face of challenges.
With the French ambassador, Mr. Laurent Bili
With the Chairman of CCI France Chine, Mr. Christoph Lauras
Lunch & Learn First Session
Being One AXA, we’ve started the Lunch & Learn “AXA Global Vision” Program to connect AXA Tianping colleagues with other AXA markets, where expertise of different professional families from AXA global entities are invited to share overseas market practices, global strategies and visions, and how other AXA entities work.
With the help of CEO Office and HR team, we arranged the first Lunch & Learn on March 31, with Krithika Kalyan, the Director of Health Operations Asia introducing healthcare systems and health insurance ecosystems in different Asia markets, as well as AXA’s health innovation strategy.
Krithika talked in below agenda:
Where are we now? – Asia health performance in 2020
How does Asia Health market work? —AXA Japan and Indonesia case studies
How do we get there? —Key strategic priorities
China market：the focus for health acceleration
We have 40 colleagues signed up with the session and received many positive feedbacks:
I really like the lunch &learn session which gives me the opportunity to get a glimpse of Japan and Indonesia markets, as well as AXA’s health layout in APAC.
Grateful for consolidating AXA’s global resources and arranging this session. It helps broaden our horizon and provide valuable insights!
It helps me to gain a clearer idea of AXA’s differentiation in the market, for example, Emma by AXA. I now have more confidence in our health strategies in Asia.
I’m motivated to see China market being the focus of the Group, which makes the work more meaningful.
Krithika helps us to get access to the health product development in east Asia markets, which inspires AXA Tianping on our product and service design. Two topics impressed me most – one is Japan’s HPM which fully practices our global Purpose, the other the dynamic health strategies across Asia.
For those of you who haven’t got the chance to attend, I invite you to log on to the Elearning platform:
I met three media friends during the Fanhua summit and conducted in-depth conversations about AXA’s ambition and vision in China, our strategies and health focus, as well as my personal views on female leadership and AXA’s support in that front.
I would like to remind you that on September 25 last year, we launched “AXA Hearts in Action”, a volunteering program through a 24h global relay challenge. I was deeply touched to see all AXAers across the world doing good deeds for vulnerable communities. I remember addressing the importance of taking up long-term volunteering activities to all of you, rather than doing a one-off “stunt”.
What a delightful treat it is, seeing you carry this spirit and have conducted three volunteering sessions from December last year to date. I know you spend a lot of time and put a lot of thoughts into designing activities, only to bring love and care to the mentally disabled – a group of innocent children trapped in grown-ups’ bodies of Sunshine Family.
I care about our friends from Sunshine Family and think a lot about them. During the Chinese New year, I asked if they had anything on their wish list, and how lovely they were to have replied that “Pretty much everything can be found in Sunshine Family except a set of uniform so that we look more like a family when wearing the same clothes”. They don’t have much but they ask so little. The least that I could do was to offer them a set of sportswear as the CNY gifts.
Nicole
Through one of our recent volunteering activities, I saw our Sunshine Family friends in uniform, and our logo shining through. There are not enough words to express how proud I am as an AXAer, and how grateful I am to have loving and caring colleagues like you!
My sincere gratitude to Cathy from Finance, Tatiana from digital transformation, Benjamin from Commercial line, Nicole from MKT & Communications and my personal assistant Candy!
Cathy and Candy with our new friends
Cathy and Candy with our new friends
Benjamin
Tatiana
Moving forward, we will have more volunteering activities and I therefore encourage all of you to participate, and pass AXA’s love and responsibility on, to truly live our purpose of “Act for Human Progress by Protecting What Matters”.
Your Voice Matters
In the end, I would like to express my gratitude for your sincere feedbacks on the last issue. Your voices are all heard and will be valued. Coincidentally, with the help of Comms team, we are building an employee community on Corporate WeChat （WeCom）called AXA Family and will adopt those constructive suggestions in its design.
Below are some nice advices I would like to share with you :
You may notice in my Fanhua vlog I mentioned that I usually commute on shared bike. It helps on my health and also reduces the carbon footprint. I believe small step can make a huge difference and we can all take actions big and small to live the AXA Purpose, to build an eco-conscious place not only to act responsibly but also to enhance our productivity and health.
What kind of green actions you have been taken as your daily routine ? Please don’t hesitate to share with me.
Last month, I invited all of our colleagues to take part in the #Springtime photo competition, where I’ve seen many lovely photos capturing the beauty of this season from colleagues all around the country. First, I would love to share those photos with most likes and thank you all for your feedbacks. I’m glad to see that altogether 325 colleagues and 32 teams have joined his event to share the spring in their eyes. Following the result announcement yesterday, I would like to send my congratulations to Biao Chen from Chengdu Operation Center, Jianya Zhou from Zhejiang Branch and Ling Wu from Hangzhou Sub-branch, and teams including Chengdu Operation Center, Call Center, Ningbo branch and Markting & Communications!
Like these blossoms, we are charging forward with hope and confidence on the Soar to Success journey. I will share the Q1 update in this issue. Among recent achievements, the Fanhua cooperation hit the headlines. Fanhua is one of the largest independent brokerage houses in China and was listed on Nasdaq, with nearly 400,000 sales agents.
I visited Chengdu on April 12th to attend the Fanhua Summit and signed a strategic cooperation agreement with them. Together with the distribution team, health team and marketing colleagues, I spent the whole afternoon with their 2000 elite brokers across the country. Among all the companies invited, AXA Tianping is the only Property & Casualty insurer and also the only foreign-owned company. And we are the sole company to have one hour to present on stage and introduce the AXA brand and expertise.
I’ve prepared a vlog of the day to give you a clearer idea of the event and cooperation. Hope you like it.
Dialogue with AMO
I am happy to see that the first episode with Gordon was very well received by our colleagues according to the newsletter survey, with 47.37% votes! This month, we are delighted to speak to Dongjun (DJ) Choi, the Chief Strategy & Customer Officer of AXA Asia. DJ is from South Korea and has worked across multiple markets and regions including the USA, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. In addition to spearheading the strategic development office to lead AXA’s digital transformation in Asia, DJ also oversees the regional finance, health, and distribution functions.
In the dialogue, DJ also shares his impression on our team and recommendations for first-time visit in Seoul. Through the quick-fire session, you will know whether he is a Baechu Kimchi person or a Kkak-doo-ghi person.
In the meantime, upon knowing that we were holding an internal springtime photo competition, DJ sent us a selfie of him enjoying a walk along the beach with his wife. Very romantic and sweet. I bet you will all like it! Please click below video to find out more interesting facts about DJ. I hope you enjoy it
AXATP 2021 First Townhall
On April 16th, with the help of CEO office and HR team, I hosted the first Townhall for 2021 and updated the Soar to Success result for the first quarter for all AXA Tianping colleagues. We had head quarter colleagues gathering in the open area on 11th floor at Ruiming HQ building, virtually joined by Jinqiao HQ office, all branches and call centers.
The session followed below themes:
Q1 Business overall growth
Business lines updates: health, motor, lifestyle, and commercial lines
Fanhua strategic cooperation
Industry recognition from CBIRC on low customer complaints rate
Q&A on corporate culture and AXA core values
Among all the topics, I would like to underline the importance of building the corporate and compliance culture guided by AXA’s core values – Customer First, Integrity, Courage and One AXA.
As a big fan of Chinese philosophy, I always encourage myself to behave with integrity in life and in work, as I explained during the townhall, by the two Chinese proverbs -“勿以善小而不为，勿以恶小而为之(Do good deed no matter how small it could be,and don’t do evil no matter how tiny it seems.)” and “君子坦荡荡, 小人长戚戚(Gentlemen are bighearted,a villain is always haggle over every ounce.)”. Please send me a message if you know any other old sayings that match our company culture.
For the first two topics, please find details in below stories.
Soar to Success Q1 Updates
It has been 235 days since we launched the Soar to Success program on September 7th in 2020. We are making great strides with solidarity efforts, in the four pillars – distribution, health, motor and efficiency.
In 2020, our operation profit was far beyond global target, with 29% non-motor business ratio, and a fourth-fold health upturn. In 2021 first quarter, we recorded total GWP of RMB1.42 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 4.33% in original premium income.
Below are the development details for the four pillars.
Going forward, I will keep you closely updated on STS results on quarterly basis as we did in the first townhall.
Spotlight on the Team – Board Office, Legal & Compliance
This is a new column to introduce our teams. From this month, I will invite one team each time to tell more about themselves. I hope we can build stronger connections and understandings with the persons working with you!
As we discussed during the townhall, we are creating a Compliance culture within the company. I believe everyone is willing to be with a company that has standards, norms and integrity, either for customers or employees. Compliance can protect and empower the company to go further at a steadier pace.
This month, we will start with Stephen Liu and his team – the Board Office, Legal & Compliance. For many of us, the team may seem a bit distant and legal professional may appear very serious in some stereotypes. How are them in real life? What is their daily routine in work? Let’s find out the answers in below video:
CCI France Chine’s #Executive Experience
I was very delighted to have been invited by Mr. Christoph Lauras, chairman of CCI France Chine to attend the “Executive & Experience Luncheon” on April 14, at the residence of France in Shanghai.
During the two-hour luncheon, I have met many old friends, Chinese and French, with the presence of the French ambassador, Mr. Laurent Bili; the French consul general in Shanghai, Mr. Benoit Guidee, and the chairman of CCI France Chine, Mr. Christoph Lauras. What a pleasant exchange we had on the Sino-French friendship and the prosperous future we will have! It’s a win-win game, leveraging market advantages of the two side.
I’ve always believed that both China and France have deep, profound culture as well as competitive advantages when it comes to economic cooperation. I encourage that all of us work together with our friends in France under the pandemic situation, to strengthen bilateral cooperation, complementing each other with our own advantages, so as to seek a win-win situation in face of challenges.
With the French ambassador, Mr. Laurent Bili
With the Chairman of CCI France Chine, Mr. Christoph Lauras
Lunch & Learn First Session
Being One AXA, we’ve started the Lunch & Learn “AXA Global Vision” Program to connect AXA Tianping colleagues with other AXA markets, where expertise of different professional families from AXA global entities are invited to share overseas market practices, global strategies and visions, and how other AXA entities work.
With the help of CEO Office and HR team, we arranged the first Lunch & Learn on March 31, with Krithika Kalyan, the Director of Health Operations Asia introducing healthcare systems and health insurance ecosystems in different Asia markets, as well as AXA’s health innovation strategy.
Krithika talked in below agenda:
Where are we now? – Asia health performance in 2020
How does Asia Health market work? —AXA Japan and Indonesia case studies
How do we get there? —Key strategic priorities
China market：the focus for health acceleration
We have 40 colleagues signed up with the session and received many positive feedbacks:
I really like the lunch &learn session which gives me the opportunity to get a glimpse of Japan and Indonesia markets, as well as AXA’s health layout in APAC.
Grateful for consolidating AXA’s global resources and arranging this session. It helps broaden our horizon and provide valuable insights!
It helps me to gain a clearer idea of AXA’s differentiation in the market, for example, Emma by AXA. I now have more confidence in our health strategies in Asia.
I’m motivated to see China market being the focus of the Group, which makes the work more meaningful.
Krithika helps us to get access to the health product development in east Asia markets, which inspires AXA Tianping on our product and service design. Two topics impressed me most – one is Japan’s HPM which fully practices our global Purpose, the other the dynamic health strategies across Asia.
For those of you who haven’t got the chance to attend, I invite you to log on to the Elearning platform:
I met three media friends during the Fanhua summit and conducted in-depth conversations about AXA’s ambition and vision in China, our strategies and health focus, as well as my personal views on female leadership and AXA’s support in that front.
I would like to remind you that on September 25 last year, we launched “AXA Hearts in Action”, a volunteering program through a 24h global relay challenge. I was deeply touched to see all AXAers across the world doing good deeds for vulnerable communities. I remember addressing the importance of taking up long-term volunteering activities to all of you, rather than doing a one-off “stunt”.
What a delightful treat it is, seeing you carry this spirit and have conducted three volunteering sessions from December last year to date. I know you spend a lot of time and put a lot of thoughts into designing activities, only to bring love and care to the mentally disabled – a group of innocent children trapped in grown-ups’ bodies of Sunshine Family.
I care about our friends from Sunshine Family and think a lot about them. During the Chinese New year, I asked if they had anything on their wish list, and how lovely they were to have replied that “Pretty much everything can be found in Sunshine Family except a set of uniform so that we look more like a family when wearing the same clothes”. They don’t have much but they ask so little. The least that I could do was to offer them a set of sportswear as the CNY gifts.
Nicole
Through one of our recent volunteering activities, I saw our Sunshine Family friends in uniform, and our logo shining through. There are not enough words to express how proud I am as an AXAer, and how grateful I am to have loving and caring colleagues like you!
My sincere gratitude to Cathy from Finance, Tatiana from digital transformation, Benjamin from Commercial line, Nicole from MKT & Communications and my personal assistant Candy!
Cathy and Candy with our new friends
Cathy and Candy with our new friends
Benjamin
Tatiana
Moving forward, we will have more volunteering activities and I therefore encourage all of you to participate, and pass AXA’s love and responsibility on, to truly live our purpose of “Act for Human Progress by Protecting What Matters”.
Your Voice Matters
In the end, I would like to express my gratitude for your sincere feedbacks on the last issue. Your voices are all heard and will be valued. Coincidentally, with the help of Comms team, we are building an employee community on Corporate WeChat （WeCom）called AXA Family and will adopt those constructive suggestions in its design.
Below are some nice advices I would like to share with you :
You may notice in my Fanhua vlog I mentioned that I usually commute on shared bike. It helps on my health and also reduces the carbon footprint. I believe small step can make a huge difference and we can all take actions big and small to live the AXA Purpose, to build an eco-conscious place not only to act responsibly but also to enhance our productivity and health.
What kind of green actions you have been taken as your daily routine ? Please don’t hesitate to share with me.
