Bharti AXA General Insurance
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Bharti AXA General Insurance Co. Ltd. is a joint venture between Bharti, one of India’s leading business groups with interests in Telecom, Agri Business and Retail; and AXA, world leader in Financial Protection and Wealth Management. Bharti Group holds 74% of equity and AXA holds 26% of the equity.
Background
The Property & Casualty market in India has been liberalized in 2000 and is 5th largest market in Asia with premiums of €4.2bn. It has been growing at an average growth rate of 14% over last five years and Swiss Re has projected that it will continue to grow at 13% pa until 2015.
Key drivers for growth are:
• Strong GDP growth expected to continue coupled with compelling demographics - second most populous nation in the world with a young population (median age of 24.9 years).
• Low non-life insurance penetration of 0.6%, below Asian average of 1.6%.
• Growing middle class population (~250m) with increasing affluence.
• Lack of social security provided by government will drive needs for financial protection.
Keeping these in mind and having a long term commitment in India, both Bharti and AXA formed a joint venture with an intent to serve the Indian population. The joint venture was started in the year 2007 and they finally got approval from IRDA in the month of July, 2008.
Promoters
Bharti Enterprises
Bharti Enterprises is one of India’s leading business groups with interests in telecom, agri business, financial services and retail. Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company, is one of India’s leading private sector providers of telecommunications services with an aggregate of over 75 million customers as of end of June 2008, spanning Mobile services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. Bharti has recently forayed into retail business under a company called Bharti Retail Pvt. Ltd. It also has a joint venture - Bharti Wal-Mart Private Ltd. - with Wal-Mart for wholesale cash-and-carry and back-end supply chain management operations in India.
AXA
AXA Group is a worldwide leader in Financial Protection. AXA's operations are diverse geographically, with major operations in Europe, North America and the Asia/Pacific area. For full year 2008, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 91.2 billion and IFRS adjusted earnings to Euro 3.7 billion. AXA had Euro 981 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2008.
The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISIN FR0000120608-Bloomberg: CS FP- Reuters: AXAF.PA). The American Depository Share is also listed on NYSE under the ticker symbol AXA.
Operations
Bharti AXA General Insurance Co. Ltd. has presence across India with 30 branches at various locations.
Latest News
Bharti AXA General Insurance Co. Ltd plans on investing around Rs 645 crore as share capital in expansion plans over the next five years.