AXA's gross premiums up 1% in Q1; life, health premiums fall

Its growth was driven by the property and casualty segment of the insurance firm.

Insurance giant, AXA, showed first-quarter gross written premiums and other revenues inched up 1% year-on-year (YoY) to €31.8b.

This was mainly driven by property and casualty (P&C) which grew YoY by 6% to €18.6b.

The P&C’s commercial lines premiums climbed 7% to €11.5b, due to “continued favourable price effects as well as higher volumes notably across AXA XL and Europe”.

This signalled upward repricing in most businesses and larger volumes in property and speciality lines. This was also countered by smaller premiums in North American professional lines and the continued underwriting control in international casualty which consisted of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Likewise, P&C’s personal lines premiums went up 4% to €5.9b which was pushed by higher premiums in Motor.

AXA XL reinsurance premiums decreased by 2% to €1.2b. This was dragged further by lower premiums in property cat due to a reduction in exposure.

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However, life and health gross written premiums and other revenues fell by 4% to €12.8b.

Broken down, life premiums contracted by 4% due to the smaller premiums in unit-linked. This reflected the challenging market conditions, more so in France and Italy, said AXA.

Because of the non-renewal of two large legacy international group contracts, health premiums dragged further by 5%.

Life and health’s present value of expected premiums fell 17% to €11.7b. Likewise, total new business value (NBV) also went down 11% to €0.7b. However, the NBV margin inched up to 5.6%, which showed improved underlying new business profitability.

Net flows recorded a €0.7b fall influenced by G/A savings which dropped €2.8b. However, this was counterbalanced by the protection segment which went up €1.6b, mainly from Asia, Switzerland and France.

Health net flows also inched up €0.4b, of which the majority come from German and Asia businesses. Whilst, unit-linked growing €0.1b was mostly from the France unit.