AXA to create 200 jobs over three years at new Dublin headquarters

FRENCH insurance giant AXA could create as many as 200 jobs at a new international product headquarters in Dublin for one of its key subsidiaries.

AXA Global Distributors, which mainly takes care of distribution services for AXA Group investment products, is to create the jobs over the coming three years. The company has begun recruiting at its Dublin office, with 30 positions having already been filled.

Approximately half of the positions are scheduled to be filled within the next 12 months.

Michael Gregg, AXA Global Distributors’ joint managing director, said he hoped the 200 jobs would only be the start in Ireland.

The subsidiary was established two years ago to create closer links between AXA and large retail banks and ease the distribution flow of the group’s variable annuity and investment products through those clients’ bank networks.

Mr Gregg said Ireland was an obvious location choice given the country’s positive and “well defined” business culture, its “high value skill set”, “the strength of its labour pool” and the fact that the AXA Group already has a strong presence here.

AXA has been in Ireland since 1999 and employs more than 1,000 people across various financial services operations.

The new jobs – or “high value employment positions”, as AXA is calling them – will be in the areas of IT, sales, marketing and policy administration.

“Our decision was down to the track record and success of our other operations in Ireland, the availability of highly educated graduates with language skills and the access Ireland provides us to EU markets,” Mr Gregg added.

According to Barry O’Leary, chief executive of IDA Ireland, which was involved in attracting the new jobs to Dublin, the development is “a great achievement for Ireland’s insurance industry” and “highlights AXA’s confidence in Ireland as a location of choice in which to do business”.

On officially unveiling the new office yesterday, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the move underlined Ireland’s reputation as a prime location for highly innovative companies. He also paid tribute to IDA Ireland’s efforts to bring in more jobs, highlighting the fact that more than 2,000 have now been announced since the beginning of the year, 820 of which have been announced in the past month.