COVID-19: AXA strengthens its commitments to tackle an unprecedented health, economic and social challenge

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to spread globally, AXA today announces the strengthening of its action plan to tackle the health, economic and social emergency.

• Responding to the economic and social emergency

AXA’s 160,000 employees and partners have been available and fully operational, notably thanks to remote working tools, from the start of the crisis to meet client needs and continue to play their role in the economy.

Jobs maintained, without resorting to short-time working

AXA announces today that the crisis will have no impact on employment or on the remuneration of employees during the confinement period; AXA will not use temporary unemployment. The Group also undertakes not to defer any social security or tax payments in France during the period.

AXA is a Group that has its social responsibility at heart and wishes the financial efforts of public authorities to be primarily directed towards the most vulnerable individuals and businesses.

Exceptional measures for our most affected customers

These announcements come in addition to exceptional measures that have already been taken to provide flexibility to business customers, particularly SMEs.

In several countries, including France, the Group will continue to insure businesses even in the event of late payment due to the pandemic, for the duration of the containment period, and will ensure prompt payment to all suppliers to enable them to maintain the cash and liquidity needed to overcome the crisis.

Euro 37 million for solidarity funds

AXA will also be the leading contributor, with Euro 27 million, to the solidarity effort coordinated by the Fédération Française de l’Assurance (FFA). In total Euro 200 million will be contributed to the solidarity fund set up by the French government for small businesses and the self-employed.

This is in addition to AXA partner association AGIPI’s creation of the AGIPI Covid 19 Solidarity Fund, endowed with Euro 10 million to support clients experiencing economic difficulties.

• Responding to the health emergency

In response to the health emergency, as a major international healthcare company, AXA is committed to directly helping its employees and clients, while supporting medical actions in the regions in which it operates. AXA has extended coverage and services to healthcare professionals in several countries and leveraged its own medical networks and teleconsulting services to contribute to the healthcare effort. Finally, the Group has taken full action to support and compensate its customers affected by the virus.

2 million masks distributed as part of an emergency plan to support healthcare professionals

To strengthen its support for healthcare professionals on the frontline against the virus, AXA announced today that it will provide 2 million masks to help healthcare workers. The first 350,000, which will be sent out in the coming days, and distributed to French hospitals, are much-needed FFP2 masks. AXA France has set up psychological support resources for healthcare workers.

Support will also be provided to the AP-HP (Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris), the public hospital system of the city of Paris and the Ile-de-France region. AXA will donate 20,000 meals to the AP-HP care community for lunch or dinner at home.

These solidarity measures for health professionals come in addition to donations already made to hospitals and intensive care units in several countries. AXA is also supporting intensive care units through a partnership with the 101 Fund, a network of 1200 intensive care centers in over 60 countries, that aims to share real-time information from each unit to accelerate the improvement of therapeutic protocols. This funding will also make it possible to set up accelerated training for caregivers in order to increase the staffing capacity of these units.

Euro 5 million to fund research on infectious diseases, including COVID-19

Finally, AXA Research Fund, which has made a steadfast commitment over the years to support research on infectious diseases and pandemics (35 projects from leading institutions worldwide for a total of Euro 7.4 million), has decided to mobilize an additional Euro 5 million for the development of responses to infectious diseases and COVID-19, including the implementation of post-crisis solutions.

AXA also supports the creation of the Institut Pasteur's COVID-19 Task Force and the OpenCOVID-19 initiative launched by Just One Giant Lab (JOGL), an open-source research platform aimed at providing low-cost emergency solutions to respond to the pandemic, with a particular focus on low-income countries.