Team size: 500

Can you tell us a little about your significant accomplishments over the last few years, as a team or by yourself? 

Since becoming general counsel in 2016, my team and I have worked with the business to design and execute a strategic transformation of AXA, refocusing on core lines of business and geographies, but also radically transforming AXA’s risk profile from financial to operational risk. This was achieved through a series of transactions from 2018 which included, the acquisition of XL Group, a Bermudian company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and its subsequent integration into the AXA Group, the IPO of AXA Equitable, the largest IPO in the US, in 2018, and subsequent sell downs to fund the acquisition, and lastly, the acquisition of 100% of AXA Tian Ping in China and sales of AXA Bank Belgium and AXA’s insurance operations in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Singapore.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the insurance industry found itself in the front line, as clients claimed for lockdown losses under insurance policies. More particularly, AXA Group was party to over 2,000 litigations across Europe relating to Covid-19 losses, under business interruption coverage, which essentially arose because the policy wordings had never anticipated a pandemic crisis of this dimension. The Group’s legal team worked closely with local legal teams to manage reputational issues and financial exposure, including concluding early settlements in the Swiss and Germany markets, a unique one-shot group settlement in France, as well as dealing with the impact of the UK FCA test case. Learning from this experience, the general counsel and group risk officer set up a multidisciplinary working group to identify systemic risks and simplify policy wordings for the future.

Have any recent political, economic or regulatory changes impacted your work or company? How are you dealing with this? 

AXA has always been at the forefront of climate change initiatives. The EU is currently implementing one of the most comprehensive sustainability regulatory frameworks in the world, focused on making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This has required legal foresight and support for business teams as sustainability moves transversally into businesses across the organisation, from corporate responsibility departments, and required more legal bodies on the ground committed to supporting real business change.

In the “perfect storm” of increased regulation, increased regulatory scrutiny and increased risk of litigation, the AXA Group legal team plays a key role in assisting the board and senior management navigate the changing landscape and understand and discharge their governance and oversight responsibilities.

In addition, my team was instrumental in the establishment of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), the aim of which is to extend our commitment to climate neutrality on the asset side to our insurance business. The NZIA currently has 25 of the world’s largest insurers as members, and AXA chairs this committee and its legal working group.