When Scott Gunter contemplated making a move from being president of a commercial insurance division of Chubb to become chief executive officer of AXA XL, he felt the timing couldn’t be better.
Executive Summary
AXA XL CEO Gunter is diving into his new role remotely because of the COVID-19 lockdowns—using his time on the ground to virtually connect with business leaders and customers, and taking their feedback and insights to frame decisions about organizational leadership and about underwriting actions. AXA XL is turning down the volume in price-challenged lines and amping it up where conditions warrant to improve the results of a company already prized by customers for its innovative client orientation.AXA and XL, which officially came together in 2018, had already worked through most of the tough work of integrating the two companies, he recalled during an interview roughly seven months into his new position, responding to a question about what motivated him to take on the role of leading what is now a division of AXA.
“As an outsider looking at that work, I thought, ‘What an incredible opportunity.’ When I think of it, the word I use is potential,” said Gunter, a 30-plus-year veteran of Chubb, who was chief underwriting officer of Chubb Commercial when his company merged with ACE in January 2016.
“You take the global strength of XL, which is in 30-plus countries. Large corporate clients. Specialties out of the UK. We have a lot of broad products [and] risk consulting—engineers helping clients. You look at all of that, and you combine it with what AXA brings—that financial strength of AXA, the reputation and the global footprint they have—and you think, ‘There’s a lot of potential in this organization.'”
