Bangkok--29 Aug--AXA Insurance
Despite the significant slowdown of the General Insurance (GI) business for the first half 2014 in Thailand, AXA Thailand has been successfully continuing to expand the business while achieving a strong profit.
Mr. Martin Rueegg, Chief Executive Officer said, “While the Thai GI market only grew 1% in the first 6 months of 2014, AXA Insurance has been able to leverage on its multi-line and multi-distribution strategy to increase the sales by around 4% compared the same period the year before. This has been achieved while preserving profitability of the business and further strengthening the balance sheet what translates to a strong solvability of the company”.
The economic impact to the insurance business, namely the motor insurance which counts for - 40% of the whole GI market, also influenced the development of AXA Insurance: On a year on year comparison, the retail business, driven by motor insurance, decreased by almost 5% while the commercial business increased around 8% and health business expanded by above 59%.
Besides the good business performance, AXA Insurance is more than ever focusing on increasing customer experience. A good illustration for this is the newly launched road safety mobile application ‘AXA DRIVE’ to encourage road users to improve driving behavior.
“Research has shown that human error is the key driver for road accidents.” AXA Road User Behavior Survey 2014 said and added that “This is why AXA has to play an active role to show drivers behaviors and give them advice how to improve. The newly launched AXA DRIVE is exactly doing this: The application records your acceleration, braking and behavior while turning during phases of a trip, and it then produces an analysis. Also after the trip, AXA DRIVE evaluates your driving behavior that the driver can compare your results with friends on social networks. After that you will also receive useful tips on how to improve your driving behavior.”
Looking ahead, AXA Insurance will launch more customer experience innovations in the second half of 2014. This is for example the online motor insurance policy renewal which allows the customers to renew their policies with a few clicks in a few minutes. Another one is the online health portal to bring the transparency and engagement with health insurance customers to a next level.
“We are continuing to invest into customer experience as this is for us the key for a sustainable development of our business in Thailand. The new health portal clearly illustrates this: We significantly increased our customer based in the first half of the year and will do the same for the rest of the year. Not only will health insurance help us to keep the strong momentum but also the commercial business is a key pillar for our development. We even expect a recovery of the motor business in the second half of 2014.” added Martin Rueegg.