Award Applications

1. AXA Hong Kong – Digital Innovation and Partnership Team
AXA Hong Kong created the Digital Department in Sept 2015 to accelerate innovation breakthroughs, by separating it from Marketing and having the Chief Digital Officer as a member of the Executive Committee. The department counts 4 different teams: E-commerce, E-services, Digital Agency (Servicing both e-commerce and e-service as a studio, with developers, UX designers, architects,) and Innovation & Partnership team.
The mission of the Digital Innovation and Partnership team is to take the risks that no one else would in the company, to anticipate and embrace future customer trends and to create new business models, products and services that drive growth. It is like a start-up within the AXA machinery as its role is to take some risks through a test & learn approach. Starting from the strategy – being global, regional or local – and cross it with technology and consumption tendencies to identify opportunities.
The team is supported by all structures part of AXA’s innovation ecosystem, in different ways:
• AXA has two Innovation Labs, one in San Francisco and one in Shanghai overseeing all of Asia. Their role is to source tendencies relevant to our business at medium and long term, and to source fit for purpose start-ups. We work with them on a weekly basis, in an agile mode.
• AXA also has two Data Innovation Labs, one in Paris and one in Singapore which can support us on a given initiative or a given R&D topic.
• AXA Strategic Ventures is our Private Equity fund and we are free to propose a start-up in which we believe in, should such opportunity arise.
In November 2016, we are proud to have realised a big step forward in accomplishing this mission, as we officially released our new and wellness Innovation Project: Xtra by AXA.

2. Boundlss
To create Xtra by AXA, AXA Hong Kong’s Innovation & Partnerships Team formed a strategic partnership with the start-up Boundlss. Boundlss provides robo-coaching via a digital health platform for Health and Life Insurers. Their team has significant experience in technology, healthcare and insurance and won Best Insur-Tech start-up at the Australian FinTech Awards in June 2016. Moreover, their diverse Coaching Team of sports enthusiasts, fitness coaches, nutritionists and customer engagement specialists have already helped thousands of people to achieve their healthy lifestyle through the use of technology and wearables.

3. Xtra by AXA
Xtra by AXA is the only free Personal Coaching mobile app in Hong Kong that rewards you for living a healthy lifestyle. It is available in both English and Traditional Chinese. How does it work? Just ask your new in-app digital wellness motivator called Alex! Alex is part-human, part-robot (Artificial Intelligence) and available 24/7 to motivate you and to answer all of your wellness questions. Whether you want to increase your daily activity, manage your weight or even learn some super tasty and healthy cooking recipes, Alex has you covered – just ask away!
To help Alex provide you with the most relevant health program and advice, Xtra by AXA allows you to connect with more than 200 wearables and wellness mobile apps. If you are diagnosed as a high risk Type 2 Diabetic, Alex can even provide you with a free 4-month prevention program to decrease your risk.
To help you maintain your health goals, Alex will reward you with Xtra Points each time you achieve your daily health target – and points means prizes! You can also earn Xtra Points by helping Alex optimize the app by sharing your feedback or if you help Alex to recruit a new user.
With a whole range of prizes to be redeemed from within the app, achieving your wellness goals has never been easier. There is a first list of health, wellness, fitness and lifestyle rewards and based on your consumption and feedback, Alex will look for new rewards every month.

4. Governance
In less than 6 months, we have been able to design our product thanks to an AGILE approach and great collaboration between AXA Hong Kong and Boundlss. On top of this daily basis relationship, we organised weekly committee including all the stakeholders (Boundlss, Innovation team, media and advertising agencies and AXA business team)
We have also involved more than 50 AXA Hong Kong employees in this journey as our first Beta Testers. They were all coming from different departments and lot of them wasn’t use with innovation methodologies such as AGILE or Design Thinking.
Finally, we have the opportunity to rely on the Distribution Team to get the support of 80 AXA Agents to promote Xtra to their clients (result: +400 users in 3 weeks)

5. Results
Today Xtra by AXA is not linked to any AXA insurance product and so available for everyone on the market but still the results linked to the app itself are better than the KPIs initially fixed.
• 83% of our registered users are active*
• 40 seconds average response time
• 4.5/7: Apple Store / Google Play average rating
• 50% users talked to Alex (the coach)
• 30 messages sent on the 6 first days by the users on average
Xtra by AXA truly focuses on improving the wellbeing of its users through tailored coaching and rewards, which is a first in this competitive landscape.

To discover more about Xtra by AXA:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbhTYdzjJbQ
• https://www.axa.com.hk/en/xtra-by-axa
• https://www.the-digital-insurer.com/blog/insurance-connected-using-ai-customer-engagement/