Fostering a more inclusive world

Fighting inequalities and contributing to a more resilient and inclusive society have always been important commitments for AXA. By pooling risks, insurers protect people, businesses and goods over the long term and actively contribute to economic growth and social stability.

For AXA, joining the Business for Inclusive Growth Initiative (B4IG), a coalition of more than 30 companies from the G7 countries and supported by the OECD, represents a unique opportunity to unite strengths and drive collective action to tackle an increasingly complex issue.

The B4IG coalition will be based on three main pillars:

• The creation of a coalition of companies willing to build common solutions for a more inclusive economy
• An incubator allowing companies to share their initiatives and co-develop projects to address inequalities
• A funding mechanism to support the incubator's projects and scale-up the most promising solutions

Through its participation within the B4IG initiative, AXA seeks to accelerate some of its flagship initiatives around inclusion:

Addressing territorial inequalities. In France, we have been pioneers in offering telemedicine services to our customers since 2015. As access to healthcare is becoming a major social issue, we decided to share our expertise and established a partnership with the Hauts-de-France region to fight against medical deserts. In Morocco, we have been organizing "health caravans" since 2011, which allow people living in rural areas to consult a doctor free of charge.

Reducing inequalities of opportunity through our Emerging Customers initiative. Since 2016, this global platform aims at providing low income populations with tailored micro-insurance solutions. As of December 2018, AXA was supporting more than 9 million people in emerging countries, mainly in Africa and Asia. Supporting entrepreneurs is one our priorities when it comes to reducing inequalities of opportunities. As part of this focus, we partnered with the Lead Foundation in Egypt to provide entrepreneurs with microinsurance solutions that compensate business losses in case of hospitalization. In 2018, we supported more than 200,000 entrepreneurs.

We are also convinced that entrepreneurship is a powerful lever to fight gender inequalities and promote women empowerment. In France, we support the “Elles pour Entreprendre” project, which provides women with training content on entrepreneurship and financing solutions. In Italy, we created “Angels for Women” the first business angel network dedicated to women, designed to bridge the investment gap by connecting investors and successful women entrepreneurs.

Tackling the effects of climate change. Vulnerable populations are increasingly exposed to the consequences and economic impact of climate change. Today, close to 90% of losses related to natural events in developing countries are not insured. Easy access to data has enabled us to develop parametric solutions and provide populations at risk with adequate coverage: payments are triggered automatically when a measurable threshold is crossed (river level, temperature). We will launch by the end of the year FastCat, an immediate protection service leveraging satellite imagery to support communities facing natural catastrophes such as flood, earthquake, cyclones and wildfire.

These are only a few of the initiatives AXA is committed to in the field of economic inclusion. By becoming an active member of the Business for Inclusive Growth Initiative, we hope to join forces with other companies, foster ambitious partnerships and cooperation with the public sector and increase our ability to leverage our services and solutions towards a more inclusive and sustainable economy.