It announced its first entry into the UK and Irish mobile phone insurance market earlier this year
AXA Partners has revealed its wider plans to be fully comprehensive in smart home solutions, following ten partnerships over the last two years.
Since the firm decided to widen its presence in the UK, March saw the digital partnership arm of AXA Group announce its first entry into the UK and Irish mobile phone insurance market via a partnership with Pier Insurance.
And in January, it signed a long-term contract with Scottish Power to deliver home emergency cover for plumbing, drains and electrical insurance.
Later that same month it partnered with messaging and e-commerce firm – WeChat to create a program offering travel insurance services in China.
AXA Partners’ initial aim upon its launch in 2015 was to become the “partner of choice” for companies within automotive, bank and credit cards, retailers, utilities and telecoms, digital players and public sector and Non-Government organisations – with AXA insuring or delivering a service to individuals or SMEs, via a partner.
Kelly Ward, sales and innovation director at AXA Partners UK and Ireland told Insurance Times that the firm plans to look at how to make services better for customers and cater to their changing needs in its ongoing plans for expansion.
“We are going into multi-sectors because we think there are a number of entry points to the customer, we are expanding our product capability, because we believe as a global organisation we should offer more and we have a firm belief in digitalisation being an enabler that makes all of this work.
In regard to its number of partnerships, “the idea is to join these things up to be an-end-to-end solution for customers,” he added.
Digitalisation
This year, Ward hopes to see “more partnerships in more areas and more digitalisation”.
He believes that digitalisation is the way forward, “I think most people want to do their household chores at work on their lunch break on their phone. When we looked at who to partner with, we were very impressed with Scottish Power in terms of capability and digital appetite, and they are part of a Spanish [electrical utility] company called Iberdrola and one of the Big Six.”
Ward explained that the Big Six gives AXA Partners distribution whereas the challenger brands gives it innovation – therefore it is looking at both.
“The Big Six gives us distribution whereas the challenger brands give it innovation so therefore we are looking at both. With our partnerships we want them to be multi-territory, we do have an interest in partnering with utilities.”
He said that those that who do not digitalise will struggle to survive.
Partnerships
Speaking on its partnership with Pier Insurance, Ward said: “We recognise that with mobile insurance, particularly in the UK, that we haven’t played in it extensively. We felt that their expertise meant that they really understood the market and they have ambition to grow.”
Ward said that the firm also has an interest in security such as how customers protect their properties as well as solving one of the biggest industry problems and highest claims for home insurance – escape of water.
Challenges
But Ward said that his main challenge is balancing speed of integration while mitigating in relation to the amount of regulation in insurance.
“Organisations have got legacy systems, but there is enough technology out there to make sure we can do things quicker and better,” he said.
He concluded that to meet this challenge, every deal that AXA Partners does has a reflective “wash-up” task after it, where the firm looks at what they could have done better with the intention of applying these lessons to the next partnership.
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