Business Strategy and Outlook
| Henry Heathfield, CFA |AXA’s takeover of XL changed the business from one fundamentally focused on life and savings, particularly in France and Europe, to a business with a much heavier exposure to non-life insurance in United States and large-scale commercial and specialist lines of insurance. While non-life insurance previously accounted for under half of new capital, this part of the business now takes over half of this metric. While protection and health maintain their current share of management focus and investment, there has been a small reduction in life and savings. AXA is being transformed into a business that relies more heavily on technical sources of profitability that are less dependent on the performance of financial markets.