Axa hails importance of face-to-face meetings as it seeks to be more visible

At the beginning of 2022, Mallaby said the insurer was committed to becoming more accessible to its brokers and highlighted the importance of re-establishing relationships with its intermediary partners.

Speaking with Insurance Age this week, she stressed that if insurers do not engage with their brokers in person, then they will struggle to build deeper relationships.

She detailed that Axa for one has become more visible and engaged across all of its teams.

“All of our account managers are now having regular monthly meetings face-to-face. We are very much involved with hybrid working, but our client-facing teams are going back out in the market,” she said.

Face-to-face focus

“Our underwriters have become more engaged as well; they are bringing their expertise to the market and going to brokers’ offices. That has taken a little bit longer, but they are focused on being face-to-face.”

We are very much involved with hybrid working, but our client-facing teams are going back out in the market.

Sarah Mallaby, Axa

Mallaby stated that the insurer has invested heavily in its Blueprint transformation programme, which has taken the business off its legacy systems onto a platform that gives the customer a more intuitive user experience.

She added: “This has enabled us to be more digitalised, automated and streamlined – that is what our investment has been used on mainly. We have focused on our data and now have better pricing models and a new policy admin system.”

These changes should enable the insurer to have more digital products, a portal for its brokers and a better self-service for its customers, according to Mallaby, all of which should be available at the tail end of this year.

Back to basics

Over the past 12 months, she also stated that the provider has accelerated its back-to-basics approach around delivering an efficient trading experience and that its strategy has shifted towards being more customer-centric.

“We are getting our staff free from doing data entry and spending more time engaging with customers and brokers,” Mallaby explained.

She added that Axa has also re-established some of its core broker engagement programmes: “Our national advisory board and our broker summit that we held in Paris have been reintroduced; as has our broker development work and the training programmes that we do. There is a huge amount that we do online now, so we are ready to connect with our clients and brokers.”

Despite the improvements in broker engagement, Mallaby believes insurer service is not back to where it should be, and customers’ expectations around digitalisation is a contributing factor.

Continuous improvement

She said: “I would be amazed if there is any trading director in the industry who thinks service is amazing and where they want it to be. We know Covid changed the world, and now digitalisation is accelerating at a rate of knots because customer expectations are always changing, so we know we must always continuously improve.

“We also need to harness technology and the skill sets of our people to enable us to deliver a really good broker experience and service a new hybrid working world. We’ve not quite got there, but it is a number one priority for us.”

According to Mallaby, Axa’s shareholders have given more investment for it to grow its broker business this year, especially in its mid-market offering.

She concluded: “We have been given investment to recruit more people and it is an exciting time for us because its shifting us into the mid-market and mid-corporate space. So we will be launching a new product and proposition for those larger customers. We are also working on a mini global product, which again will be for those top-end customers.

“On top of all that, I want us to be a well established and recognised business that our brokers believe is a supportive partner.”

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