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AXA Global Business Services Embarks on a New Era of Transformation as it Celebrates 30 Years in India

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AXA GBS marks three decades in India, expanding across Bangalore, Pune, UK, and Morocco. It serves over 35 AXA entities in 14 countries, delivering innovation, operational excellence and high customer satisfaction, and has an employee footprint of over 4,000 employees globally.AXA GBS is transitioning from traditional transactional work to a high-value, output-based model, further demonstrated by its new state-of-the-art facility in Pune, focusing on technology, automation, data analytics and AI.AXA GBS has achieved a higher customer satisfaction rate, and with a focus on upskilling, is investing heavily in role-based learning academies, an 88% employee engagement score and 90% retention rate, reflecting a commitment to people-centric growth and global collaboration.

BENGALURU, India and PUNE, India, Feb. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — AXA Global Business Services (AXA GBS), a part of the AXA Group, proudly celebrates its 30 years of operations in India. The occasion was marked by a celebratory townhall in both Pune and Bangalore, with the AXA GBS Executive Committee members joining CEO, Michele Rochefort at the event.

With a global employee footprint of over 4,000 professionals across Bangalore, Pune, UK, and Morocco, AXA GBS continues to expand its presence while driving innovation, employee experience, operational excellence and strong customer satisfaction.

AXA GBS currently co-partners with over 35 AXA entities across 14 countries. It blends expertise in technology services such as application development & maintenance, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and industrial automation, along with traditional business process services including language support to deliver tangible value across AXA’s global ecosystem. This milestone also marks a significant transition for AXA GBS to being a trusted advisor to AXA entities driven by a high-value, output-based operating model.

“At AXA GBS, we love to dare. We are looking within first, cannibalizing our existing business model through a bold program of intelligent automation and digitalization. We are looking to enhance our traditional operational services with a powerful combination of automation and technology, enhancing the value for AXA entities globally. With a strategic focus on driving organic growth and scaling existing services, we are confident of providing flexibility to AXA entities, unlocking collective value for AXA Group. We are investing heavily in upskilling our employees, empowering them to build their capabilities to complement their wealth of domain expertise. We are scaling operational excellence by investing in tools, platforms, and integrated systems to support AXA entities seamlessly, to be consistently impactful advisors. As an integral part of the AXA Group, AXA GBS has extensive domain knowledge and we are well placed to own, drive and deliver results for our various global entities. Our focus also remains on retaining intellectual property and value within AXA. I am confident that our strategic transformation will yield great results for our Entities, Processes, and People. 30 years combined with AXA Group’s 40th year anniversary in April is a testament to our long-standing legacies entwining to deliver value for the Group,” said Michele Rochefort, Chief Executive Officer, AXA Global Business Services.

AXA GBS’s dedication to operational excellence is reflected in its increased customer satisfaction rate and net promoter score in the past one year. AXA GBS has demonstrated commitment and expertise in forging strong and trusted relationships with AXA’s global teams.

“With a focus on exceptional customer satisfaction, we have launched an integrated service catalogue, ensuring AXA entities have a holistic view of what we can do for them. With a smooth customer relationship management platform at the back-end, we are investing more time to co-create with our entities to open doors of innovation and excellence,” said Timothy Auger, Chief Customer & Transition Officer, AXA Global Business Services.

A newly opened, state-of-the-art facility in Pune underscores AXA GBS’s commitment to fostering a great place to work poised to deliver enhanced service delivery and cutting-edge innovation, while promoting a collaborative, inclusive workspace. Furthermore, as a skills-based organization, it fosters a high-performing and engaged workforce with an 88% employee engagement score and an impressive 90% retention rate, achieved through robust role-based learning academies.

“Our people are our exceptional talent engine – our secret sauce! Their dedication and talent drive our success and enable us to be consistently impactful advisors to AXA entities. We are committed to making AXA GBS a “Skills-First” organization, and ensuring every employee has a career path aligned to their personal growth and career ambitions – where they can truly own their career,” said Isabelle Isnard, Chief People and Communications Officer, AXA Global Business Services.

“Last year alone, AXA GBS had over 67% of our employees volunteer for over 42 corporate social responsibility programs across the country. Our commitment to communities around us for inclusive protection and environment will continue; but we are also investing in ensuring it is a promise made by our people – 5% of goals in our employee performance is dedicated to community volunteering work; and we are on the path to combining this dedicated time to be skills-based volunteering to ensure there is more purpose to work and a flavor for learning. This is a particularly special achievement for us – our goals in advancing in the fields of automation, data analytics, and AI, along with other technologies, is beautifully balanced with and grounded in our drive to do good for our people, communities, and environment. And these numbers validate that,” said Rahul Sinha, Chief Data Analytics and AI Officer & Executive Sponsor – CSR at AXA Global Business Services.

As AXA GBS looks ahead to its new chapter, it remains steadfast in pushing boundaries and embracing emerging technologies to drive AXA’s global ambitions. Harnessing its talented workforce and evolving service offerings, it stands poised to shape the future of insurance and beyond, setting new benchmarks for innovation, collaboration and measurable value creation.

LinkedIn:
https://in.linkedin.com/company/axa-global-business-services-axa-gbs

ABOUT AXA GLOBAL BUSINESS SERVICES

AXA Global Business Services (AXA GBS) is a part of the AXA Group, a leading multinational insurance firm headquartered in Paris, France. Located in India, Morocco, and UK with more than 4000 employees, the organization provides essential business support services across various functions such as finance, human resources, IT, and procurement to AXA entities worldwide. As part of AXA’s commitment to tech-driven innovation, AXA GBS plays a pivotal role in fostering cutting-edge technological solutions and driving digital transformation across the organization.

ABOUT THE AXA GROUP

The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 147,000 employees serving 94 million clients in 50 countries. In 2023, IFRS17 revenues amounted to Euro 102.7 billion and IFRS17 underlying earnings to Euro 7.6 billion. AXA had Euro 946 billion in assets under management, including assets managed on behalf of third parties, as of December 31, 2023.

The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISN FR 0000120628 – Bloomberg: CS FP – Reuters: AXAF.PA). AXA’s American Depository Share is also quoted on the OTC QX platform under the ticker symbol AXAHY.

The AXA Group is included in the main international SRI indexes, such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4GOOD. It is a founding member of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Principles for Sustainable Insurance and a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment.

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFORMATION AND CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND THE USE OF NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

Certain statements contained herein may be forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, statements that are predictions of or indicate future events, trends, plans, expectations or objectives, and other information that is not historical information. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by words and expressions such as “expects”, “anticipates”, “may”, “plan” or any variations or similar terminology of these words and expressions, or conditional verbs such as, without limitations, “would” and “could”. Undue reliance should not be placed on such statements because, by their nature, they are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are outside AXA’s control, and can be affected by other factors that could cause AXA’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, such forward-looking statements. Readers are therefore cautioned that a variety of factors could influence and cause actual results to differ from those anticipated or implied in any forward-looking statements, in some instances materially. Each forward-looking statement speaks only

at the date of this press release. Please refer to Part 5 – “Risk Factors and Risk Management” of AXA’s Universal Registration Document for the year ended December 31, 2023 (the “2023 Universal Registration Document”) for a description of certain important factors, risks and uncertainties that may affect AXA’s business and/or results of operations. AXA specifically disclaims and undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether to reflect new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by applicable laws and regulations. This press release is not intended to and does not contain or constitute an offer to purchase or sell AXA’s securities. In addition, this press release refers to certain non-GAAP financial measures, or alternative performance measures (“APMs”), used by Management in analyzing AXA’s operating trends, financial performance and financial position and providing investors with additional information that Management believes to be useful and relevant regarding AXA’s results. These non-GAAP financial measures generally have no standardized meaning and therefore may not be comparable to similarly labelled measures used by other companies. As a result, none of these non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, the Group’s consolidated financial statements and related notes prepared in accordance with IFRS. “Underlying earnings”, “underlying earnings per share”, “underlying return on equity”, “combined ratio” and “debt gearing” are APMs as defined in ESMA’s guidelines and the AMF’s related position statement issued in 2015. AXA provides a reconciliation of such APMs to the most closely related line item, subtotal, or total in the financial statements of the corresponding period (and/or their calculation methodology, as applicable) in its Half-Year Financial Report as of June 30, 2024, on the pages indicated under the heading “IMPORTANT LEGAL INFORMATION AND CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND THE USE OF NON-GAAP AND ALTERNATIVE PERFORMANCE MEASURES”. For further information on the above-mentioned and other non-GAAP financial measures used in this press release, see the Glossary set forth in AXA’s 2023 Universal Registration Document.

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Northern Hemisphere Heat Drives Demand for Cooling and Sun-Protection Products on Yiwugo

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YIWU, China, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Yiwugo.com, the official website of the Yiwu Commodity Market, is the largest commodity wholesale market in the world. The final whistle may have blown on the World Cup, but the intense heat gripping the Northern Hemisphere shows no sign of letting up. Europe has experienced unusually hot weather this year, sparking not only a surge in demand for air conditioners but also a boom in portable handheld fans. Merchants on Yiwugo say that in previous years, European customers would begin placing orders in March or April and take their time completing their annual procurement. This year, however, the purchasing season has stretched well into summer, with a flood of new buyers coming in, most of them looking for small handheld fans. With customers eager to capitalize on the peak summer season, delivery timelines have also become significantly tighter. Whereas orders in previous years could generally be fulfilled within a month, merchants are now frequently being asked to deliver within about a week, leaving manufacturers scrambling to keep pace with demand.

Lingpan Official Flagship Store has specialized in the production and sales of small fans, insulated cups, and related products for 15 years. This summer, demand from European customers for high-speed small fans has risen sharply, accompanied by urgent delivery requirements. Many customers began requesting shipment just one week after placing their orders, hoping the products would arrive in time for the World Cup and the ongoing heatwave across Europe. One long-standing European customer purchased only five models of small fans from Lingpan last year. Anticipating stronger demand ahead of this summer, the customer expanded the order to 10 models. The first shipment sold out soon after arriving at port, prompting several subsequent repeat orders. European buyers have shown particular interest in high-speed cooling fans and placed great requirements on product quality. So far this year, Lingpan’s fan sales have more than doubled compared with the same period last year, with total purchases reaching approximately RMB 1 million.

Beyond Europe, the owner of Lingpan, Ling Pan pointed out that the Indian market has also undergone significant changes over the past two years. Indian customers are showing great interest in panda-shaped fans, drinking cups, and related products. Procurement volumes among many Indian buyers have increased substantially, with average annual purchases now reaching several hundred thousand yuan.

Unlike European countries grappling with sudden heat waves, Asian markets such as Japan and South Korea, where summers are consistently hot and air conditioners and fans are already everyday essentials, have shown much stronger demand for sun-protection products. From April 1, 2026 to date, sales of sun-protection masks on Yiwugo have increased by 31.6% YoY, while sales of sun-protection face shields surged by 72.42% and sun hats rose by 8.1%.

Chen Jia, a Yiwugo merchant, has engaged in the production and sales of sun-protection masks and sun-protection face shields for eight years. Chen operates the Xiao Zhen and Xiao Mian Sun-Protection Products Workshop in District 4 of the Yiwu International Trade Market. In recent years, the company has customized cooling nylon fabrics for customers in Japan and South Korea. Sun-protection masks and sun-protection face shields made from this material not only offer UPF 50+ protection, but also maintain a more structured shape and are less susceptible to snagging or deformation. Their protective performance remains effective after routine washing, and the products can last for more than five years under normal use.

In 2024, a TV shopping operator from South Korea contacted Xiao Zheng and Xiao Mian through Yiwugo and began placing orders after inspecting the products in person. Over the following two years, the company continued to improve the fitness and design of its sun-protection products. It introduced sun-protection face shields with breathable mesh panels and incorporated soft supports around the nose area to prevent the masks from rubbing against lipstick. These product upgrades have steadily driven up customer ratings on the client’s store. Annual procurement, initially valued at around RMB 300,000, has risen year by year, and the company has since developed into a recognized brand in the local market.

Persistent heat across the Northern Hemisphere has been creating new forms of cross-border consumer demand while enabling Yiwugo merchants to keenly capture shifts in overseas markets. From the strong sales of small portable fans in Europe to the rising demand for functional sun-protection products in Japan and South Korea, the diversity of orders reflects both consumers’ need for relief from extreme heat and the ability of Yiwu manufacturers to strengthen their presence in global markets through product innovation and rapid fulfillment. Faced with a rapidly changing international market, many merchants are continuing to refine product designs, upgrade fabric techniques, and enhance supply efficiency. By leveraging Yiwugo to broaden their export channels, they are keeping pace with overseas consumption trends and capitalizing on the expanding market for cooling and sun-protection products, turning the summer heat into new momentum for cross-border trade.

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SOURCE Yiwugo.com

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Snorkel AI Highlights First Wave of Open Benchmarks Grants Projects

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SAN FRANCISCO, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Snorkel AI today highlighted the first group of projects supported through Open Benchmarks Grants, a $3 million commitment to support open-source datasets, benchmarks, and evaluation research.

Launched in February 2026, Open Benchmarks Grants has received hundreds of applications from researchers, labs, and engineers working to address a growing challenge: AI systems are advancing faster than the field’s ability to rigorously measure their performance on realistic, consequential work.

“From complex environments and huge autonomy horizons to rich, sophisticated outputs, these projects tackle some of the field’s hardest evaluation challenges,” said Fred Sala, a member of the Open Benchmarks Grants steering committee and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “I’m excited to see the broader research community use, validate, and build on them.”

Open Benchmarks Grants provides selected teams with funding, expert data development support, research and engineering collaboration, and platform resources. Supported projects include:

Frontier-Bench (formerly Terminal-Bench 3.0), developed with Laude Institute and the Harbor community, is a harder, more domain-diverse successor to Terminal-Bench 2.1 — built in the open, task by task, under continuous adversarial review.Agents’ Last Exam, developed with UC Berkeley RDI and the RDI Foundation, evaluates agents on long-horizon, economically valuable professional workflows. It spans 55 sub-industries and includes more than 1,500 tasks toward a 5,000-task target, sourced and validated by more than 300 industry experts.OSWorld 2.0, developed with XLANG Lab, evaluates computer-use agents on 108 long-horizon workflows across 31 self-hosted web environments and professional desktop applications.Continual Learning Bench, developed with UC Berkeley SkyLab and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, measures whether agents genuinely improve across sequential, stateful tasks.SlopCode Bench, developed with the University of Wisconsin–Madison, measures how code quality degrades as coding agents repeatedly modify and extend their own solutions.Terminal-Bench 2.1, developed with Stanford University, Laude Institute and the Harbor community, evaluates agents on challenging work in terminal environments. The release corrected 28 tasks and introduced continuous validation.

With support from Open Benchmarks Grants, Terminal-Bench Science is also now in development, extending the Terminal-Bench framework to computational research workflows across the life, physical, earth, and mathematical sciences.

Beyond the grants program, Snorkel led the development of Senior SWE-Bench with the research teams at Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The benchmark evaluates coding agents on senior-level engineering work, including implementing features from realistic instructions, investigating bugs that require runtime analysis, and producing code that follows existing codebase conventions.

Open Benchmarks Grants was established with support from Hugging Face, Prime Intellect, Together AI, Factory, Harbor, and PyTorch. Applications remain open and are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Learn more and apply for a grant at benchmarks.snorkel.ai.

About Snorkel AI
Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes. 

media@snorkel.ai

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Payzli Vaults to No. 3 on Tampa Bay’s Fast 50, Up From No. 22 in One Year

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Payments technology company, Payzli earns a second consecutive Fast 50 ranking, crediting the climb to accelerating partner and merchant growth on its proprietary technology stack.

TAMPA, Fla., July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Payzli, the partner-first payments technology company, has been named the No. 3 fastest-growing company in the region on the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s 2026 Fast 50 – a 19-spot climb from its No. 22 debut last year, and the company’s second consecutive year on the list.

The ranking was announced July 23 at the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s Fast 50 event in Tampa, where Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer Naim Hamdar accepted the award alongside members of the Payzli team.

Payzli attributed its growth to a compounding effect: a national network of ISOs, agents and ISVs bringing merchants onto a technology platform Payzli built and operated in-house. 

That platform rests on three proprietary pillars:

Payzli Connect: the company’s payment CRM and merchant-and-partner dashboard, giving agents and ISOs daily residuals visibility and giving merchants a single place to run their account.Payzli POS: AI-powered point-of-sale and business software purpose-built for service businesses, including salons, med spas, wellness studios, and independent operators.Payzli Transact: an online payment gateway built on Visa Platform Connect through Payzli’s partnership with Visa Acceptance Solutions.

The Visa Acceptance Solutions partnership is central to how Payzli frames its credibility: rather than assembling a growth story on top of borrowed infrastructure, the company processes on rails backed by one of the most established networks in the industry alongside Fiserv and TSYS – a point that matters to the partners and merchants deciding where to place their volume.

“A second year on this list, and a jump to No. 3, isn’t about one good quarter. It’s about a network deciding to build with us and stay,” said Naim Hamdar, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Payzli. “Every rank on this list represents partners we’ve earned and merchants who trust us to run their payments. We built the technology in-house so we could keep the promises the industry usually breaks: nothing hidden, a real person in reach, and daily residual visibility our agents can actually count on. That’s what this ranking measures and it’s why we’re doing it all, for the joy of business.”

“They say nothing in Tampa moves fast except the afternoon thunderstorms, so making the Fast 50 two years running feels pretty good,” said Kapil Pershad, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Payzli. “In all seriousness, this is a credit to our team and the businesses that trust us to power their growth.”

The Fast 50, produced by the Tampa Bay Business Journal, recognizes the fastest-growing private companies in the Tampa Bay region. Payzli’s return to the list and its move into the top three reflects a merchant-first product suite and a rapidly expanding national partner network across the payments and embedded-finance landscape.

About Payzli

Payzli is an end-to-end payments technology partner that makes accepting payments simpler and affordable for businesses of all sizes and risk levels. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Tampa, Florida, Payzli brings together in-person processing, an advanced online gateway, AI-powered point of sale, and mobile and contactless payments – backed by its own technology, honest pricing, and dedicated human support. Built partner-first, Payzli equips ISOs, agents, developers, and independent software vendors to grow, with direct integrations to major processing platforms, in-house underwriting, a flexible credit policy, a Visa Acceptance Solutions foundation partnership, and sponsor-bank backing from Esquire Bank, a NASDAQ-listed strategic investor in Payzli. For more information, email partners@payzli.com or visit payzli.com.

Payzli is a registered trademark of United Payment Systems LLC. United Payment Systems LLC is a registered ISO of Esquire Bank (Jericho, NY), Commercial Bank of California (Irvine, CA), and KeyBank, National Association (Cleveland, OH).

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SOURCE Payzli

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