SMART WOMEN - WOMEN INSIDE : Ulrike Decoene (Axa Groupe)

Thank you very much, Marie-Claire, for the invitation. So indeed, AXA has been committed, like many large groups, for a long time to promoting gender equality within the company, of course, and with this effort to promote women in leadership positions, and we'll talk about that again later perhaps. And it's true that a number of years ago, in 2015, we thought: how can we also turn this effort and commitment towards our clients, especially our female clients, since our conviction is that insurance is a fairly important factor for integration into the economy and protection. So in 2015, we had the chance to collaborate with the World Bank and Accenture to conduct a study in emerging markets to understand the insurance markets concerning women. We realized two things: actually, quite limited access, and a potential both in terms of market for our industry, but also a very strong societal impact through the possibility of guaranteeing women access to insurance products and services. We realized there was a real multiplier effect, since women are often business owners and heads of families, especially regarding access to health. So we wanted to apply the lessons of this study, look at what was happening in our own portfolios, and see what we could develop, particularly with two focuses: health and access to entrepreneurship.

Well, we actually had a moment of surprise when we looked at our own portfolio and saw that there was indeed an underrepresentation of women among our clients, not only in emerging countries but also in the most economically mature countries, on products like savings, retirement, and health insurance in countries where the system is not dual, like in France. So that was a fairly strong realization that led us to launch a strategic program in 2016 to develop a program that would allow countries to advance on product design and initiatives, with objectives to increase the share of women in our client base.

It's clearly not marketing in the sense of painting it pink. It's a whole thing. It is like marketing in the sense that you first need to understand the needs. So this segment pushed us to do a lot of market research and customer studies to understand where the blockages were. We saw several things: a lack of information, which led us to develop many awareness programs, work with our distribution forces, including in France, so that our agencies are also... to adapt certain products we already had, or to develop ones we didn't have in our range. I'm thinking particularly in Asia or in many countries where health protections are quite basic and generic, whereas we developed very specific products for female cancers, which are devastating. By listening to women about what the need was, they are often active, so psychological support, support for the family—many are caregivers. So it forces us to be very programmatic about needs. It's a vast program that has developed very well.

Absolutely. Listen, I think we are engaged in this absolutely essential effort, and we do it with... I think we have all learned the importance of addressing the subject from all dimensions. Obviously, the first thing is to combat biases, necessarily, to break the image that women are not fit for certain positions. Many internal mentoring programs are absolutely essential, as is sponsorship, so that women can be guided over several years by people who can advise them on their career choices beyond their management. And then through more programmatic things: tireless and extremely rigorous work on pay equality, ensuring that in all our promotions there is no imbalance that is created or recreated, and ensuring that for the top 50, which is really the executive pool, we look closely at each candidate for each position, that we have a man and a woman on the shortlist, both equally capable of taking the job. This has led us to make progress. We are at 36% women in this pool today. What is important is that we have seen a curve that has accelerated quite a bit in recent years. What I find extremely satisfying is the progress we are making on female general managers. We don't want—I'm not well placed to say—but we want this to be a movement across all functions, operational and general management. So we are at 37% at AXA, which is practically the 40% we are aiming for. So it's very good.