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nsurance firms AXA Indonesia and AXA Mandiri have said they are continuously improving their digital services for customers and agents in a bid to become the country'€™s top insurers.

AXA Indonesia chief marketing officer Emmanuel Wehry said both his company and AXA Mandiri were optimistic about the future of their business prospects in light of their digital transformation, which has been going since 2012.

Both companies believed the digital transformation '€” which enhances their services in mobile phone applications and websites '€” would provide simpler access for customers in line with changing lifestyle trends, Wehry said.

He explained that research conducted by Global Web Index, an Internet research agency, showed that Indonesia had 58 million Internet users, the seventh most in the world. The figure skyrocketed 430 percent between 2008 and 2013.

The research also showed that around 28 percent of Indonesia'€™s Internet users accessed the Internet through mobile phones, he added.

'€œRight now, almost all Indonesians own mobile phones, while Internet users in this country are predicted to grow to 90 to 100 million in the next few years. That number is one of the highest in the world,'€ Wehry said on Wednesday.

As part of initiatives to cater to this growing trend, Wehry said AXA Indonesia partnered globally with various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Ingress.

According to Wehry, the digital evolution has changed the way customers interact with insurance companies. For instance, he said that digital platforms had simplified the process of sharing information on insurance products and services, a process that had been quite complicated.

In order to leverage the trend, Wehry said, AXA Indonesia was continuously investing million of US dollars in digital platforms, revealing that around 50 percent of his firm'€™s advertising budget had been spent on digital media.

Yanti Parapat, sales and business development director at AXA Life Indonesia, said AXA had launched last year a website called AXA Direct to serve every process related to customers'€™ policies as well as sell products.

'€œOne of AXA Direct'€™s features, e-Claim, has been used by 36 percent of our customers. Meanwhile, another one called e-Policy is preferred by 85 percent of our new customers each month,'€ she claimed.

AXA Mandiri operational director Kartono said digital innovations started by his company had increased the level of cost-efficiency and accelerated its agents'€™ performance.

'€œWe have provided a portal called SMART that will prompt our sales agents to communicate faster with our head office during the process of customer acquisition,'€ he said.

However, both Yanti and Kartono declined to detail their companies'€™ targets for additional premium revenue growth from digital services.

France-based insurance giant AXA SA owns four Indonesian subsidiaries in the insurance business, which are under the supervision of PT Asuransi AXA Indonesia (AXA Indonesia). The AXA group also owns PT AXA Asset Management Indonesia, an investment management company.

The four insurance subsidiaries are PT AXA Life Indonesia, PT AXA Financial Indonesia, PT AXA Mandiri Financial Services (AXA Mandiri) and PT Mandiri AXA General Insurance (MAGI).

AXA Mandiri is controlled by state-owned lender Bank Mandiri with total shares of 51 percent, while the remaining 49 percent are owned by AXA Group through its unit National Mutual International Pty. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd. Meanwhile, MAGI is also controlled by Bank Mandiri with total shares of 60 percent, with the remaining 40 percent owned by AXA group.