Lewis joined the Finance Club, one of the Student-Led Clubs and completed an ESG Strategy Project with other 3 full-time MBA students. Lewis shared his experience with us. 

The AXA ESG Strategy Project was initiated and led by the Underwriting Chief and the Product Team of AXA Insurance Hong Kong as a collaborative case study between the HKU Business School MBA Programme and the renowned global insurance company. The aim of the project is to brainstorm and deep-dive into the potentials where ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) concept can be organically integrated into AXA insurance’s proposition. I would like to express my gratitude to Rose Seo from the HKU MBA Alumni Office for her efforts in helping our MBA students to connect with such a precious opportunity with AXA, one of the most respected insurers in the world. 

Our study project group consists of 4 full-time MBA students in the Finance Club, one of the Student-Led Clubs, including me with various professional backgrounds: engineering, banking, entrepreneurship and technology. The project focused on how ESG and sustainability ideas could be better integrated into the existing insurance products available in Hong Kong. Our purpose is to craft a feasible strategy for a tactically refined product offering to drive people’s daily behaviours towards a greener and better lifestyle. One of the major approaches we adopted was to navigate through the entire life cycle of an insurance product. By conducting an analysis of the customer journey and the motives and incentives, we were able to identify the pain points and gaps for the existing insurance product offering and to make sense of how a positive feedback loop could be generated throughout the cycle of insurance protection via behaviour changes. 

Through the project, we really gained a much deeper understanding of the essence of and the vision behind ESG, including its economic, social and compliance implications in our society. Although none of our project group comes from an insurance background, we received great advice from the Product Development Team who also shared a lot of real-case practice with us in guiding both the brainstorming and the thought process. The experience was truly valuable for MBA students like us in the sense that we were able to combine both theoretical and practical knowledge shared by the industrial insiders from the AXA Team. Last but not least, we would also like to thank Ms Chelsea Jiang, Ms Catherine Ng and Ms Nicole Siu from AXA Insurance Hong Kong for their active engagement and support.