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AXA records 19% profit growth in the Gulf for 2009

March 9, 2010 12:00 by Aarti Nagraj

AXA records 19% profit growth in the Gulf for 2009

                 Strong performance amidst adverse environment conditions

 

 

Jean-Louis Laurent Josi, CEO AXA Insurance Gulf & Middle East

 

“In the midst of economic uncertainty and adverse environment conditions, AXA has demonstrated its resilience and sound technical expertise with its 2009 results.

·            Over USD 445 million GWP (growth of nearly 8.6% on a comparable basis)

·            Net income over 40 million USD (+19%)

·            Solvency ratio: 149%  as at 31^st Dec 2009 (net of proposed dividend)

·            Customer satisfaction at 88%¹

 

This strong performance during such a turbulent time has been made possible thanks to our business model, the engagement of our staff at all levels and the trust clients have by placing their risk with us.

 

Thanks to our well diversified geographical presence in the GCC, all the countries in the GCC, with the exception of the UAE, reported a double digit growth between 15% to 26%. In the UAE, Abu Dhabi increased by 25% whilst Dubai was slightly down. AXA is the largest international player in the region and in the top 5 of the largest companies in terms of net earned premiums.

 

This positive performance is also attributable to the fact that we have high levels of employee satisfaction, measured every year, with more than 80% of our employees being engaged with AXA and our overall customer satisfaction from the last survey with 88% of our customers being “satisfied” to “extremely satisfied”. Add to that, we have high brand awareness² for an international company in the countries in which we operate and we are looking to further strengthen our brand awareness. We are also thrilled that the market has supported us with the recent Gulf Insurance Award for the Insurer of the Year and we endeavour to live up to the expectations required from us as a leader in the market »

 

Future plans

‘2010 will be a challenging year with competitors trying to grab market share by aggressive means. AXA will continue investing in the region and soliciting feedback from its customers in order improve products and services. Our focus will be to continue to further develop our product offering, reward our claims free clients with good rates, attract and retain the right customers and employees and continue to invest in tools that will make life easier for our clients. We recently moved our call center staff in Dubai to a state-of-the-art call center and we plan to launch our current UAE online transactional service in the other countries as well. This is all part of our plan to make ourselves more available, reliable and attentive to our clients.

 

We believe that our client’s main satisfaction is linked to our good claims service. And we will continue to focus our efforts towards providing the best claims service in the region. Last year itself we paid out as much as USD 289 million in claims payments and I am proud that we came through for our customers during their time of financial duress. As a recent example, during the deluge in Dubai last December, while the vast majority of insurers did not cover their customers, we paid as much as 60% of our car flood claims.

 

As for growth areas, we see growth coming from countries like KSA where we have established our new cooperative company and were recently granted a license by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to sell our products there.  We will also push for growth from the rest of the other countries where we already have our presence.

                                         Notes to the Editor:

About AXA in the Gulf

With a workforce of over 650 employees, 12 offices region-wide, more than 500,000 customers and a gross written premium of over US$ 445 million, AXA is the largest international non-life company in the GCC offering a wide range of insurance products and services for corporate and individual customers. AXA Gulf was recently awarded Insurer of the Year 2009 at the Gulf Insurance Awards.

 

About the AXA Group

AXA Group is a worldwide leader in Financial Protection. AXA's operations are diverse geographically, with major operations in Europe, North America and the Asia/Pacific area. For full year 2009, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 90.1 billion and IFRS underlying earnings to Euro 3.9 billion. AXA had Euro 1,014 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2009.

 

The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISIN FR0000120628 – Bloomberg: CS FP – Reuters: AXAF.PA). The American Depository Share is also listed on the NYSE under the ticker symbol AXA.

 

 

Media Relations

Lianne D’sylva                                 Alexis de Beauregard

+971 4 4453854                                           +971 4 4453850

lianne.dsylva@axa-gulf.com              alexis.debeauregard@axa-gulf.com

 

 

                         

1.         Customer Service Survey November  2009

2.        Brand awareness 2008 conducted across UAE, Oman & Bahrain

3.        The Results are not yet approved by the General Assemblies of Shareholders