AXA to leverage Bluefin for personal lines broker

AXA’s commercial lines and personal intermediary chief executive Amanda Blanc will be seeking to leverage the services of AXA-owned broker Bluefin the same as any other broker it deals with.

Blanc told Insurance Times: “We will certainly, as we have done with the commercial lines, be looking to maximise the personal lines relationship with Bluefin, but I would say that about any broker.”

Blanc, who has been responsible for restructuring the commercial lines and personal intermediary part of the business, said the response from brokers to the changes had been “positive”, but added they wouldn’t see anything physically different yet.

“I said this 18 months ago when we did the AXA commercial restructure - you have got to give us time to implement what we said we would do - so if you asked them today is there any difference, they will tell you ‘No, there’s not’ because clearly we have not done anything yet,” she said.

“The response has been that they have really welcomed the opportunity to deal with AXA as an organisation and they know me obviously so I have got a strong relationship with the guys in volumes-based businesses and in the personal lines businesses, but also they feel that having a holistic approach across AXA will benefit them in that they will not have to have two different sector people to deal with because clearly that doesn’t make sense from their perspective.

“I genuinely feel that this is a restructure that will give us a focus on the customer, which is what we have always tried to do.”

Blanc said the number of emails she had received from brokers over the last couple of weeks looking forward to doing business with her was “huge”.

She said that with personal lines typically accounting for 30% of regional independent brokers’ businesses, it was a big opportunity to provide them with a joint proposition on both the personal and commercial side.

“We have got a very strong household and motor proposition and therefore we should maximise on that opportunity,” she said.

“As far as the volumes brokers are concerned, yes they are very big in private motor and household but there are also very substantial opportunities in commercial and vehicle and micro SME and we have started to see that happen over the last two years.

“In addition to that, for all of those different distribution channels that we built in AXA, the chartered broker proposition and the marketing proposition that we have will clearly now be available to all the brokers that fall within my remit and therefore there is an opportunity for us to offer the wider proposition to the community that I’m now responsible for.”

AXA’s personal lines intermediary is worth close to £600m in gross written premium and Blanc said the company was the process of setting a new target for the next year.

Asked whether AXA had any plans to sell its personal lines business if it failed to achieve the company’s overall combined ratio target of 97% by 2015, she said there was no intention.

“I can’t even contemplate failing - it’s not something that we really do - and I think if you go into it with that mindset you are never going to achieve anything,” she said.

“So my focus is on success, it’s on achieving what we set out to do and it’s on getting to the targeted combined operating ratio and we will look at the right strategy to do that.”

Blanc said that AXA’s technology platform was better than its rivals with the ability to respond quickly to the market.