AXA Restructures Reinsurance Activities, Will Reduce U.S. Business
Philippe Donnet, the head of AXA Corporate Solutions in Paris, announced some major changes in the division, including a retreat from the U.S. market for financial guarantees and curtailing U.S. reinsurance operations.
AXA Corporate Solutions will be restructured around three main businesses “in order to allow better control and profitability from each sector,” along the following lines:
– Large risks insurance, under the brand of AXA Corporate Solutions Assurance,
– Reinsurance, handled through AXA RE 1 and its reinsurance subsidiaries,
– Run-off management controlled by the AXA Liabilities Managers company.
“As far as AXA RE’s activities are concerned, the Group aims at leveraging the company key strengths while maximizing the potential benefit from the upturn in the reinsurance market,” said the announcement.
AXA plans to cut back on the division’s U.S. operations by ceasing US financial guarantee reinsurance activities carried by AXA Re Finance, “in a context where the profitability of monoline reinsurers is being challenged by ceding companies.”
It will also cease underwriting and renewing contracts on life and non-life reinsurance businesses through its US subsidiaries AXA Corporate Solutions Reinsurance Co. and AXA Corporate Solutions Life Reinsurance Co., and will maintain a presence in the U.S. market only through the activities of its Paris-based subsidiary AXA Re.
The company said it “intends to focus its activities on property-cat non-proportional reinsurance,” and will also continue certain non-life operations including marine, aviation, reverse-flow and space. “These actions will help AXA to optimize the return on AXA Corporate Solutions activities as soon as 2003 while concentrating its reinsurance activities on markets that it considers as being the most profitable ones.”