Also like Harrison, Jerome Droesch, Axa’s regional CEO of the Gulf, made a point of indicating Axa’s willingness to consider acquisitions as part of its growth strategy.
Droesch’s comments came in an interview with Arabian Business, a United Arab Emirates-based business news magazine and website.
Like a number of other major insurers, Axa has been seeking to boost its investment in emerging markets to compensate for declines in such mature markets as Europe.
“We will do more than $500m this year so it’s quite a big operation. I think the idea is to target $1bn,” Droesch was quoted as saying in the AB article.
“The growth is quite good; in fact, it’s double-digital growth for us in revenues and in terms of profit.”
In particular, Droesch said, the introduction of compulsory insurance in parts of the GCC, such as motor insurance and healthcare in Abu Dhabi, had helped Axa’s business in the region, so that these areas now account for the "biggest part of" its business there. Healthcare insurance, meanwhile, has grown by 30% so far in 2011, he added.
Droesch also quoted made reference to plans by Axa to invest more in Latin America.
In the three months to the end of March, Axa posted a 2% drop in revenue, to €27.9bn ($39bn), compared with the same period a year earlier. However, the company is still projecting a full-year profit gain.
As reported, Axa CEO Harrison earlier this month spoke of Axa’s ambitions in Asia to drive growth through a combination of “potential acquisitions of rival insurers or pension providers as well as by organic growth”, in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, its emerging market ambitions notwithstanding, Axa is hardly letting things slide back home. In a statement last August, Axa UK’s wealth management arm, Axa Wealth, revealed that it aimed to “triple assets under management” by 2015, to £45bn, saying it would do this by focusing on its Elevate wrap platform, its Architas multi-manager business and its Axa Wealth International operation.
