Laurent Matras: Embracing data at AXA

It takes a good reason to walk back into a company one has previously left. But Laurent Matras, who left AXA in 2008, had two powerful reasons when he rejoined a year ago, this time as managing director of personal lines intermediary.

First there was the personal pull of working for commercial lines and personal intermediary chief executive Amanda Blanc. “She’s a different kind of boss,” Matras says.

The two had previously been colleagues at AXA. Before leaving for Groupama, Matras was at AXA for eight years, including two as head of personal lines underwriting and nearly three as finance director. Blanc was then regional director for the north.

The other reason for going back was the lure of working for a big group “with a lot of muscle and a big brand”.

“I’d almost forgotten the power of the brand. But even in a B2B environment brokers are keen to work with AXA because it’s such a powerful name,” he says.

Blanc has transformed AXA’s culture, he says. “Things are much more pragmatic and commercially driven. She’s changed the team quite dramatically as well.”
Blanc’s work to turn around commercial lines had a major influence on how AXA’s Paris headquarters sees the UK, he adds.

“It translates into being more supportive of our strategy, plans and investments.”

Different dynamics

It is that strategy and investment that Matras wants to talk about today.

Direct and intermediated, he says, have different distribution dynamics. “That’s probably what we got wrong in the last few years, before Amanda took over,” he says.

We can change our rates as often as we like at short notice. And we can try things. So when brokers want to expand their footprint or look at cold areas, where they don’t convert particularly well, we can try to expand or test our underwriting’

Laurent Matras, AXA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But there are parts of the direct model that AXA is trying to emulate, such as how direct insurers handle pricing platforms.

Last year it began rolling out the deceptively dull-named insurer hosted pricing (IHP) data tool. “We need to find a new name. It doesn’t have a very good ring to it,” Matras acknowledges.

But it’s a radical new technological development. “It’s trying to replicate what direct players do, but in an intermediated environment. It allows us to change our pricing as often as we want as opposed to being stuck in the software house cycle of giving 60 days’ notice,” Matras says.

Bringing flexibility
IHP has been well received and is now with all the software houses and big brokers bar one and will be used on all AXA’s motor business by the end of the year.

It’s obviously great for AXA, but what’s the sell to brokers? “We can change our rates as often as we like at short notice. And we can try things. So when brokers want to expand their footprint or look at cold areas, where they don’t convert particularly well, we can try to expand or test our underwriting,” Matras says.

This has allowed AXA to look at writing higher risks such as drivers with motoring convictions, and also to dip its toe into motorbike and classic car, all areas it previously avoided.

“Some of our panel shares have increased in volume, but we’re just starting to scratch the surface on how powerful the tool is,” Matras says. This is because AXA can feed data sources into its pricing and is using more data sources.

Matras is coy about what these all are and exactly how AXA uses them, but an example is validating that a policy applicant is who they claim to be.

“We test new data sources for a couple of weeks. They either work or they don’t, and we can then switch them off,” he says.

Matras has reorganised the personal lines intermediary team to be more weighted towards technical underwriting than distribution. He says the split, previously 50:50, is now 80:20.

Relationships take work
“Margins are tight and it is very competitive, so you have to get smarter. I wanted my team to become more technical and sophisticated in the way they approach pricing and writing. And the speed of decision making has increased,” he says.

While his team is more skilled, Matras doesn’t believe that underwriting is harder than managing broker distribution.

“Managing a relationship is not as easy as it sounds,” he says. “Following everything up, managing bad news, managing expectations, and understanding the broker’s needs and priorities can be as difficult as making underwriting decisions.”

Combining the technical and relationship part of the jobs has seen Matras build a team of dedicated development underwriters, each with a portfolio of panel and specialist brokers, which makes up most of AXA’s business. Regional brokers are still managed by on-the-road managers and a telesales team.

So what’s the end goal? Although Matras joined when IHP was in full swing and AXA was rattling towards the end of its five-year plan, he has a clear to-do list for the next 12 months. That includes full IHP on motor, progressing to using IHP on household, better data enrichment than rivals on motor and to start data enrichment on household.

“And I’d like to hear from my brokers that I have supported them as I said I was going to,” he says.