Human progress, women empowerment and AI | WFA #BetterMarketingPod with Ulrike Decoene, AXA

David, thanks a lot. It's a pleasure. I really appreciate it. I know for a chief communications officer these days can be a nightmare, so you're looking remarkably relaxed. I'm trying. So I thought we could start with you sharing a little about AXA and its purpose. Yes, we are one of the largest financial companies in the world, among the big CAC 40 companies in France. We are 40 years old, a rather young project with strong roots in insurance. Purpose-driven is close to our DNA. The founders in the 80s gathered many companies to build an international company with a clear purpose. A couple of years ago, we revived that sense of purpose. Protection was clearly at the center. It's about protecting customers' wealth, families, assets, businesses, and also the idea of mutualization and sharing risks. We connected protection to progress, a concept that not many companies use. We built our purpose around that, which has been alive for close to five years, infusing everything we do in culture and business.

We have close to 150,000 employees and agents worldwide. The way we bring them along is extremely important. Since inception, we've been a progressive company: anonymous CVs in the 90s, proactive union dialogue. We've applied those European policies globally: parental leave, inclusion, well-being, mental health, protecting women from domestic violence. We combine care with empowerment. We don't pretend to be a startup, but we create a culture where entrepreneurship can happen. We have a program called AXA Hearts in Action where 30% of employees volunteer on company time, and we aim for 50% by the end of our strategic plan. This brings the sense of purpose to employees.

It's very interesting that the risk topic is now in the spotlight. We have a Future Risk Report surveying 25,000 people. We decided to take this head on with our brand promise. Rather than focus on one concrete business topic, we highlighted the overexposure of women to risks. In France, we are piloting a home insurance product that offers relocation guarantees for domestic violence, similar to fire or flood. This year we focused on self-employed people and freelancers, inventing new products. So the concept is 'why should the future be a risk', and we started with women.

Since 2015 we announced we would stop investing in coal and have been phasing out. We have a net zero journey to align our investments and insurance portfolios with the Paris Agreement. We also see expectations to help people adapt to climate change. There's a study showing $10 trillion worth of new economic goods still need insurance solutions. So we are working on new solutions for the transition and adaptation. On incentives, 30% of long-term targets for our executives are linked to ESG: diversity, climate, own operations emissions, and new business areas in adaptation and transition.

No surprise there. Our key assets are people and data, so we need to master AI. We're investing 1.6 billion over the plan period for technological transformation. We've identified four key use cases in customer interaction and pricing that are no-brainers, and 20 more being tested. For my remit, we've already adopted tools to speed up. I want to use the enthusiasm to drive change without frustrating people. We need to implement fast.

In testing gen AI in customer service scripts, we found that AI-generated scripts tend to be more empathetic than human-written ones. We established guiding principles: full transparency on what is AI generated, and human supervision at the end. Deepfakes are a societal challenge. We are funding ethical research through the AXA Research Fund. It's a work in progress, but we must keep an ethical compass.

I can be transparent. When Thomas Buberl became CEO, there was a governance restructuring redefining local vs global. Insurance is very decentralized; marketing is locally defined. We decided not to have a global marketing function except brand, which is part of the regulatory framework. In the meantime, we've hired amazing local marketeers who are now chief customer officers. We've made incredible progress on customer satisfaction. It proved that a global marketing function wasn't critical, but that doesn't mean it lost importance. Customer realities are local.

We're so proud of this. It's one of our greatest assets. We had no experience in sports sponsorship but were convinced it was an amazing fit. Our brand promise 'No you can' and Liverpool's 'You'll Never Walk Alone' go together. We are Liverpool's global training partner for men's and women's clubs, named their training centers. We are the behind-the-scenes partner. It has given us great notoriety, especially in Asia. We work jointly on topics we care about: women's sports, mental health, sustainability, community resilience. We are very happily married.

Thank you David, thank you very much for the questions. Thank you for the great conversation.