AXA acquires majority stake in Nigeria’s Mansard Insurance for N43bn

AXA has acquired majority stake in Nigeria’s Mansard Insurance in a deal concluded on Friday for €198 million, equal to N43 billion.

The French company, AXA, announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire 100 percent of Assur Africa Holdings (AAH), which holds a 77 percent stake in the composite insurance company Mansard Insurance plc.

Under the terms of the agreement, the total cash consideration payable at closing would amount to €198 million. AXA would include the acquired operations within its Mediterranean and Latin American region.

Mansard is the fourth largest insurance provider in Nigeria, with operations in both property

and casualty, and controls 5 percent market share and life and savings where it has 4 percent market share. The company is well established in commercial lines, which represents nearly two thirds of its revenues, and has been developing successfully its retail business, achieving a growth of 40 percent per annum on average over the past three years. Mansard has built a strong competitive advantage through its multi-channel approach, with a strong focus on proprietary networks.

Tosin Runsewe, managing director of Mansard Group, said “we are delighted to join the AXA Group, a global leader in life and savings, property and casualty and asset management. It is indeed a befitting home for the Mansard Group given our leading position in the same business lines within Nigeria and our unflinching drive to consistently create exceptional value for all our stakeholders.

“Leveraging on our complementary strengths as well as common values and long-term vision, we can now deliver even higher levels of product innovation, underwriting capacity and operational excellence to our corporate and retail clients.” We view with much excitement the opportunity to bring our strong entrepreneurial orientation to bear in delivering on AXA’s sub-Saharan African expansionary ambitions,” Runsewe said.

Denis Duverne, deputy chief executive officer of AXA, said “this acquisition is a unique opportunity for AXA to enter the largest African economy with leading positions in all business lines and to get exposure to the fast-growing Nigerian retail insurance market.

“AXA will benefit locally from the knowledge of an experienced and successful management team and from a profitable platform. Thus, this transaction represents a further step in our acceleration strategy, which is at the heart of our Ambition AXA plan, and is in line with our belief that insurance is instrumental to foster economic development, by providing communities with protection and risk management expertise.”

This transaction would allow AXA to enter the highly attractive Nigerian market through a very reputable local company, led by a talented management team, moreover, Mansard would be able to capitalise on AXA’s extended distribution knowledge, unique product skills and actuarial know-how, to accelerate further its development and leverage its competitive advantages. The closing of the transaction is expected before the end of 2014, the company.

Ajibola Aderonke is an auditor at professional services firm Ernst & Young (EY). She previously worked another Big 4 accounting firm PwC. She can be reached at ajibolaaderonke@gmail.com for ideas and suggestions. The post above and its ensuing comments, if any, is purely the opinion of the writer.