Why did you launch the AXA for Progress Index?
AXA wants to play an active role in helping entities tackle the main challenges they face. This is the true meaning of our Purpose “Act for Human Progress by protecting what matters”. It drives our actions to fight climate change and improve access to healthcare. This Purpose serves as a compass for our strategic decisions and has nurtured our “Driving Progress 2023” plan. This is also a framework for our employees on a daily basis.
We know that to manage, we must measure, so we decided to implement a tool to track our progress in deploying our Purpose and reinforcing its impact. This is the objective of the AXA for Progress Index. It will help us make our Purpose concrete and effective.
How does the Index work?
The AXA for Progress Index is based on seven mid-to-long term engagements that all AXA entities must follow to further embed sustainable development in their local strategies. This index is also a monitoring tool which will enable the Group to report the data related to these engagements annually, as well as track and measure the progress AXA has made.
These seven engagements have differing scopes and aim to cover three main fields in which AXA intends to excel: as an investor, as an insurer, and as an exemplary company. In addition to that, AXA has tracked an additional objective for years now: the maintenance of its position in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) / Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) which ranks its global ESG performance in comparison with its main competitors.
What is at the heart of these commitments?
Our sustainable development strategy has two main goals: reinforcing AXA’s leadership in the fight against climate change and as an inclusive insurer. This ambition is embedded in the Index’s seven commitments. Climate is particularly significant as five of the seven commitments are related to global warming.
One of the most important commitments aims to contain the warming potential of our investments under 1.5°C by 2050, with a 20% decrease of their carbon footprint starting from 2025. But AXA is also an insurer, and for this reason, we are developing a green insurance offering and will also set indicators to track the share of green premiums.
At AXA France, the Mon Auto and Clic and Go products offer discounts on electric and hybrid vehicles. In 2020, they represented almost €26 million in premiums. We will encourage all of our entities across the world to develop products to facilitate the green transition, for individual and commercial clients. We will also act through claims management by promoting green reconstruction, integrating low carbon standards, or incorporating the circular economy into the repair process. As such, we start to sketch a “net-zero” trajectory for our insurance business.
What about financial inclusion?
Through the index, we commit to making our products and services more accessible for vulnerable populations. In this case, AXA can rely on very advanced existing entities such as AXA Climate, AXA Emerging Customers or the Women in Insurance initiative. Here again, we will set and track indicators to collect the number of beneficiaries coming from vulnerable communities to whom we give access, through tailored solutions, to a new level of social protection they did not have access before. This is also what “Act for Human Progress” means!
How will you leverage the results to accelerate on these topics?
This index is not just a statement of our achievements; it will enable us to accelerate our actions on climate and inclusive insurance. Specific working groups have been created at local and global levels to define action plans based on these commitments. We have also created a forum, the Purpose Accelerator, to foster and scale new projects and ideas, taking a grassroots approach.
Furthermore, to ensure transparency, we will communicate internally and externally on the results of the index on an annual basis. These results will be considered in the compensation packages, with an increasing weighting: some of the index’s key performance indicators are embedded in our executives’ compensation packages. This is also the case for 5,000 AXA employees, and this number will be extended in the future.
