Axa highlights progress on management gender balance

Axa “made concrete progress” in boosting its gender balance “especially in consistently bringing more women to the top”, the firm’s global HR director Karima Silvent said.

But she added that the insurer still needs to do more.

In an interview published by the company, Silvent highlighted new gender related legislation coming in, especially in Europe, with France starting to measure the gender pay gap this year.

She said: “In France we published last week a gender pay index for three of our businesses. The results were at 95/100 for AXA Investment Managers, 92/100 for AXA France and 72/100 for AXA Services. It shows that some of our past efforts are paying off because we are relatively well positioned in the sector for two of our major businesses, less for the third one but we are taking measures to improve. However, this shows also we need to continue our efforts and track progress around this.”

She said the insurer must continue to focus on the top management level, something the firm has been doing in the past year.

“I have no doubt we will succeed in getting a better representation of women among our top leadership because we have driven many initiatives and we are seeing the first results and more essentially because leaders at the top are serious about it.”

The company’s top management is now 30 percent female, up significantly from 9 percent in 2009. And the employer has set itself a goal to reach gender parity by 2023.

Silvent said: “Last year, among CEOs appointed, a significant number of them were women both promoted internally or recruited externally. I think of Olga Sanchez at AXA Spain, Sally O’Hara at Krungthai-AXA Life, Delphine Maisonneuve at AXA Brazil, Tracy Garrad at AXA PPP. “We also have women in finance who are holding positions of high responsibility such as Chief Financial Officer in AXA UK, AXA Belgium and AXA HK. For me ensuring we have even more women on business and finance roles is absolutely essential, not only in communications or human resources where women are more represented.”

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