AXA completes partial shift to India

Some brokers have grumbled about a slow down in service from AXA over the past few months. But their worry that they might be talking to someone at the end of a phone in India is unfounded.

Vaughan Underwood, AXA’s New Zealand chief executive, confirms there were some service issues during the transition between February and the end of April. But he says those were mainly due to call centre staff dealing with a much higher number of transactions due to increased business flows.

Those issues have now been dealt with and absorbed into business as usual, he says.

AXA announced its intention to move some of its processing to AXA Business Services Bangalore last September. The subsidiary of AXA UK does administration work for the AXA Group.

Underwood says the decision to shift mainly paper based processing functions was made to improve services.

“It provides us with greater flexibility and scaleability to absorb business spikes, enabling us to manage significantly increasing volumes of work within a decreased cost environment, making us more efficient at meeting the ongoing needs of advisers and customers,” he says.

Five people in New Zealand were made redundant.

But Underwood says there has been no change to the point of contact for advisers and customers.