AXA – Company of the Month – March 2021

Company name: AXA

Founder: Claude Bébéar

Year: 1816

Total Assets: €780.9 billion

Revenue: €103.5 billion

Net Income: €3.85 billion

Country:  France

Headquarter: 25 Avenue Matignon, Paris, France

Industry: Financial Service

Webpage: www.axa.com

Number of employees: 120,859

AXA, an insurance group with mutual companies at the top of its financial structure, is the second-biggest insurance institution in France and the 13th biggest in the world. Although it has handiest been working below its gift call because 1984 and is placed in Paris, AXA’s roots are in 19th-century Normandy. After instead uneventful records earlier than the 1950s, it recently experienced spectacular growth in addition to huge internationalization. Under the influence of 1 man, Claude BébÉ, AXA successively offered and absorbed numerous corporations, several of which had been two times its size. In 1990 AXA once more confronted a segment of restructuring and merging.

The first company in the history of AXA was created in 1817. This company changed into liable for the 2 predominant traits of the institution earlier than the 1970s: its area in Normandy and its felony reputation as a mutual company. Jacques-Théodore le Carpentier, with 17 different property owners, set up the Compagnie d’assurances Mutuelles contre l’incendie dans les départements de l. a. Seine et de l’Eure, a fire insurance company located at Rouen. In the company’s legal document it said that each shareholder changed into to be each insurer and insured celebration for 5 years, this being the primary precept of mutuality, in which the insured events personal the employer. The homes insured changed into a plaque bearing the letters P.A.C.L. (propriété assurée contre l’incendie), indicating that they had been insured towards fire loss. The first harm for which the employer needed to pay took place in 1819, amounting to FFr7.5. Realizing the impossibility of sharing this fee amongst 1,264 shareholders, the company invented the reserve fund. Soon afterward in 1822, the well-known fire of Rouen Cathedral required shareholders to pay for an extra crucial claim, an occasion now no longer without problems forgotten.

Great adjustments following the commercial revolution, in addition to growing opposition from corporations together with La Providence or La Paternelle, created in 1838 and 1843, respectively, required the company to enlarge and diversify its sports. Adolphe Lanne, the supervisor because of 1832, was determined to create corporations. The first one changed the unique company; the second, Mutualité Mobilière, changed to ensure movable risks. The people of Rouen referred to it as the previous Ancienne Mutuelle to differentiate it from the latter, which went into a commercial enterprise in 1847.

In 1852 a major quarrel occurred between insurance companies and the French government. Concerned about the dangers associated with the recent invention of the match, insurers tried for more than 20 years to have its production restricted or even forbidden. The authorities held on, and sooner or later set up a kingdom monopoly for the making and promoting of matches. In the intervening time, the board made decisions. They could make bigger sports to cowl the entire of France, and the Mutualité Mobili Negative; could now additionally cowl real property risks.

The start of the 20th century and World War I did now no longer carry any notable change for Ancienne Mutuelle (AM). After transferring places of work in Rouen in 1902, the primary crucial step changed into undertaken simply after the war while in 1922 Anciennes Mutuelles Accidents, a car coverage department changed into set up. It evolved fast and changed to make a first-rate contribution to the company’s profits.

In 1955, before the Group started to expand abroad, André Sahut d’Izarn may want to matter inside his company 8 mutual and also, non-mutual corporations which had been 100% subsidiaries. The latter changed into the Ancienne Mutuelle Transport de Bétail, created in 1939 on the way to ensure rail delivery of livestock. It quickly became a public company, and then it changed into obtained through AM. In 1977 it became AMRE, the reinsurance company of AM.

In 1955, AM went into a commercial enterprise in Canada, focusing mainly on Quebec. This step, collectively with the advent at AM of a younger graduate, Claude BébÉ, the son of a school-teacher, marked the start of a notable segment of enlargement at AM. During the political activities of May 1968 in Paris, André Sahut d’Izarn celebrated in fashion a 115 anniversary of the Group. The celebration in Belbeuf, Normandy, is stated to have been mainly lavish and welcomed a unique guest: a computer recently acquired.

After this segment of development, AM experienced a crisis. The loss of life of Chairman André Sahut d’Izarn in June 1972 may also have been a contributing factor. In April 1974, the longest strike recognized in coverage records started. It lasted for more than months and paralyzed the AM Group. Eventually, it resulted in June with the nomination of Claude BébÉ as chairman and the status quo of a progressive social policy.

From this point, the history of AXA, at that level Groupe Ancienne Mutuelle, cannot be separated from the tale of Claude Beacute;bÉ’s ambition and upward thrust to power. By 1978, Mutuelles Unies had already taken the manager of the Compagnie Parisienne de Garantie and the Mutuelle de l’Ouest, which specializes in felony protection, additionally joined the institution. Two years later, Mutuelles Unies and its subsidiaries finished a complete turnover of FFr2.4 million with 2,300 personnel around the sector and more than 700 sole dealers running for the institution.

The maximum current task undertaken through AXA changed into a complete restructuring of the institution, which continues to be in development and the final results of which continue to be uncertain. The restructuring started in 1986 while BébÉ, for the primary time in French insurance history, started the whole transformation of AXA’s distribution network. Instead of a conventional system, wherein every company had its well-known dealers, coverage brokers, and different income organizations, BébÉ selected to reorganize horizontally. He merged all institution corporations into 3 predominant units, every one of them similar to a single channel of distribution. As a result, AXA includes 3 entities that specialize in one channel of distribution. Axa Assurances consists of the employer’s well-known dealers, Uni Europe the coverage brokers, and Franklin Assurances offers with the closing income organizations. This shape is handiest legitimate for France; overseas distribution has now no longer been affected. BébÉ is satisfied with his system’s performance and of its relevance to the market. Whether he’s right or now no longer stays to be seen.