Sustainable Procurement Activities

This approach is articulated around two axes:

• Sustainable responsible people & processes: all the AXA professionals working in a procurement department, in addition to the Group’s Code of Professional Conduct, must sign a dedicated and reinforced Code of Ethics which promotes fairness and neutrality, confidentiality and transparency of our sourcing decisions. They also are aware of the AXA Corporate ResponsibilitySustainability  strategy and the AXA Sustainable Procurement policy through awareness sessions given by the network of Sustainable Procurement identified in our various entities;
• Sustainable responsible vendors:
  - A ESG criteria’ grid is shared across the Procurement teams and integrated into our calls for tenders. Criteria may vary according to the category of purchases.
  - AXA requires from its vendors to include a Sustainability Clause, which is mandatory in its contracts. It includes, in particular, complying with the principles of the International Labour Organization (prohibiting the resort to child/forced labor, promoting employee health & safety and freedom of expression, and non-discrimination).
  - AXA implemented an ESG Risk assessment of its suppliers, identified thanks to an internal ESG Risks Matrix. Suppliers are thus classified into procurement risk categories and evaluated against five ESG criteria (environment, social, products & services end-use impact, suppliers’ supply chain, and business integrity). Vendors falling in the highest Sustainable Corporate Responsibility risks categories are asked for an assessment via EcoVadis.
  - Aware of the carbon emissions’ impact from AXA's activities, the teams are working to implement best practices to be in line with the Group's objective which is to reduce carbon emissions by -20% by 2025. This is part of the implementation of new sustainable ways of buying locally, e.g. greening of car fleets, purchases of green energy on offices and data centers, deployment of new measures for IT purchases (e.g. ask providers to communicate their services/ products’ carbon footprint link to AXA’s purchases). All these best practices applied to various locations are shared by the Responsible Sustainable ProcurementPurchasing community to promote a wider deployment.

Detailed information on our responsible procurement policy and standard is elaborated in AXA’s Group Procurement Guidelines. The document is used for supplier selection and management purposes.

The AXA Group is pursuing its commitment in implementing these same principles and received a Platine score in its last EcoVadis evaluation. The different AXA Group’s ESG scores are available under the section SRI ratings and ethical indexes.