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In one of the biggest insurance stories of 2018, French multinational insurer AXA secured a US$15.3 billion takeover bid for XL Group, a leading global property & casualty (P&C) commercial lines insurer and reinsurer. Together under the new branding of AXA XL, the P&C powerhouse has become the largest P&C commercial lines insurer based on gross written premiums.
But how has the mega merger impacted XL’s operations in Canada? Insurance Business spoke to Urs Uhlmann, CEO and country manager at AXA XL Canada to find out his plans for the Canadian unit moving forward.
“Being part of the AXA Group gives us quite a bit more horsepower oomph from a financial perspective, from a net growth perspective, and from a capabilities perspective,” he said. “The really exciting part is the brand and the financial strength that’s behind it.
“For us in Canada, relative to some of the other countries where AXA XL operates, we’re a bit underweight. Clearly, we have a lot of potential to grow and to deploy the extra capabilities that we’ve gained thanks to becoming part of the AXA Group. That’s what we’re focused on right now – deploying those capabilities, getting them to our customers, and becoming a significant player in the large commercial market in Canada.”
Uhlmann’s aim is to build AXA XL Canada into a top three large commercial insurer (which he defines as a Canadian customer base with $100 million or more in revenue). He said this goal is very realistic with AXA XL being the largest P&C insurer in the world at the moment, but it will take some time. If the Canadian unit reaches that goal, it will essentially become the fifth largest unit within the AXA XL framework.
AXA XL Canada’s growth in the large commercial space will primarily stem from the major lines like property, casualty, and construction. The unit has already started to build up its management capabilities in construction and has had some success since the merger. The firm is also looking to build upon XL’s history of alternative risk transfer solutions in order to become a top competitor in that space.
With Canada being a “heavy broker market,” AXA XL will continue to engage through that distribution channel, explained Uhlmann, but the firm’s also looking to build better relationships with the end-consumers.
“I see it more as a tripartite relationship,” Uhlmann told Insurance Business. “There are lots of services and capabilities that brokers can bring to the table that we can’t, but I also believe we will come up with better solutions for the customers if we know them well and we have direct engagement with them in order to ensure that our solutions actually address the issues they need to address.
“We’re engaged in a payer to partner concept, in which we want to be our insureds’ partner for their risk management needs, their risk prevention, their education and so on. At the end of the day, an offering is only any good if it creates value for the customer, but we also need to make it work for us and for the broker. I think a tripartite relationship (a triangle) is better than a linear relationship because you can hear what’s being said.”
