Celebrating and supporting women entrepreneurs

This year, AXA is celebrating female entrepreneurship. The Group is hosting France’s first Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, in Paris on Friday, November 18.

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Officially recognized since 2014, Women’s Entrepreneurship Day (WED) is being celebrated in France for the very first time. AXA is organizing a special day-long event at its Parisian headquarters to support and promote women entrepreneurship.

On the agenda of this inaugural event are a series of discussions and debates to pinpoint the needs and demands of women entrepreneurs, define areas for improvement and identify development opportunities. The day will also serve to build a networking platform to facilitate idea sharing and create synergy among women entrepreneurs.

AXA actively supports women

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In 2015, the AXA Group, Accenture and IFC/World Bank published a report on the opportunities offered by better reaching out to and growing a customer base of women. It also highlighted the benefits of including more women in distribution teams.

Women entrepreneurs have been identified as a strategic segment for the Group: high priority is given to actively supporting women-led businesses, as well as developing and offering insurance products and services that are tailored to their needs and facilitate their business activities:

In Brazil, AXA’s Seguro Beleza beauty insurance offers medium, small and very small businesses in the beauty industry, such as salons or spas, a 100-percent digital property & casualty insurance product as well as a dedicated blog on tips, trends and new products;
AXA USA has launched a website providing information to women about insurance and personal protection products;
AXA Mexico has partnered with Oriflame, an international cosmetics group, to sell insurance solutions to their employees via the Mexican distribution network, whose members are 85-90% women.

Women’s Entrepreneurship Day 2016

Yana Popkostova, the founder and CEO of the European Centre for Energy and Geopolitical Analysis and a member of the Advisory Board of WED France 2016, will kick off the event, alongside Jacques de Peretti, CEO of AXA France.

The first part of the day will be devoted to a round-table debate on the domino effect of women entrepreneurship, with the aim to present inspiring models for female entrepreneurs, who can act as facilitators to help other women succeed in entrepreneurship.

A second round table discussion will focus on women and access to development. Its aim is to identify barriers that continue to hold back women entrepreneurs. Sébastien Loubry, Head of Business Development and Communication at AXA Strategic Ventures, will debate with Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, Founder and CEO of Women’s World Wide Web; Fanny Letier, Executive Director in charge of SME Equity at BPI France; and Anne Ravanona, Founder and CEO of Global Invest Her.

Focus on Global Invest Her

Global Invest Her (GIH) is a global platform created in 2013 to improve access to funding for women entrepreneurs. The company’s ambition is to create a virtuous cycle by helping women entrepreneurs access capital, change perceptions and stimulate the innovative investment sector. In September 2016, AXA entered into a partnership with the company to share the expertise of AXA leaders, through a mentoring program for members of the Global Invest Her community and the development of exclusive content on women entrepreneurs and risk.