Update on Ageas schemes migrating to AXA

15/06/2022

In April we announced AXA’s purchase of the renewal rights to Ageas’s commercial book of business. The Schemes business represents a large part of that total commercial book and it’s important we keep our Schemes brokers updated on the migration process.

By now the majority of you will have spoken with your underwriters or account managers about the acquisition. We recognise that each scheme is different and the point of these meetings is to understand how we can build a bespoke migration plan for each and every broker. The purpose of this communication is to provide clarity on current thinking regarding migration, including timescales and next steps.

There are some main principles that will guide us as we move business across to AXA.

• We will migrate your scheme when we are both ready.

  We know there may be a number of complex decisions for each broker to make and we will build a bespoke plan with you and your teams. If we haven’t done already, we will be talking to you shortly so that we understand your internal milestones, any software house implications and to build out a target live date. We have made great progress in this area already and our first batch of schemes are ready to migrate on the 1st July. (Day 1)
  
  

• AXA intends to mirror your existing Binding Underwriting Agreement (BUA), albeit with some small tweaks to fit AXA requirements.

  For those of you with existing AXA schemes these small differences will already be reflected in your existing BUA with AXA and will be familiar to you. Your existing Ageas BUA will remain in force so that you can manage the run-off and adjustments for our mutual customers. For consistency across our business, we will refresh all BAUs next year to provide one AXA standard BAU.
  
  

• Regarding policy wordings, there are two approaches:

  1. For those schemes based currently on Ageas Wordings - at migration, in large part, we will accept the Ageas Wordings with some changes to reflect AXA standards. Over time we will engage you and your teams to discuss AXA standard wordings. For your information, we have some schemes already agreed to migrate to AXA wordings from Day 1.

  2. For those schemes with broker owned wordings – we will look to maintain these with the Broker being the product co-manufacturer. As discussed with many of you already, we may make some changes to reflect AXA standards but the premise is to keep these changes to a minimum.
  
  

• You will continue to deal with your Ageas schemes team who have been successful in partnering with you over the years.

  The Ageas Schemes team has TUPE’d across to AXA now and have access to both AXA and Ageas policy management systems. The AXA schemes and delegated authority team won’t be involved immediately in day to day trading, but our relationship management teams will connect and co-ordinate to provide you with a joined-up One AXA approach.
  
  
  

In the background we have been reviewing wordings, setting up agencies and creating strong processes to manage bordereaux, MID and claims. All this is being done to ensure Day 1 success for you, your scheme and your customers. You can be confident that when we are both ready to migrate your scheme, from the very first day, bordereaux and claims will all run as smoothly as possible.

We will be in touch in the coming week to get into the real detail with you and your teams. We are really excited about migrating your scheme across to AXA. We hope that we can grow with you and build longstanding mutually profitable schemes together in the future. Getting the first schemes live in July will  set us up for a phased delivery over the rest of the year that works for you, AXA and Ageas.

Regards

Cathy Taylor
Business Director