Hello, everyone. We are delighted to welcome you this morning for this conference press for the presentation of the annual results of the AXA Group. You probably saw that this morning we published our press release. Thomas Buberl, CEO of the group, Guillaume Borie of Strategy, Finance, Underwriting and Risk and Groups Technology, Alban de Mailly Nesle , CFO, and Mathieu Godart , AXA France CEO, will deep dive into these figures, into this performance. After the presentation, you can obviously ask your questions, and then the press conference will be followed by lunch with Thomas Buberl and all members of the management committee with whom you can dialogue. I will now turn it over to the AXA Group's CEO, Thomas Buberl.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the press conference presenting the AXA Group's 2025 annual earnings.
Before we begin this presentation, I would like to come back to the latest weather-related events that took place in our territory in recent days. Tens of thousands of homes have been impacted by the natural catastrophes. Our thoughts, of course, are with all these victims. From the very start of the severe weather, our AXA teams were fully mobilized, involved, both on the ground and remotely, certainly to support our policyholders at every step in this difficult situation as regards claims, processing, administrative procedures, emergency relocation, and obviously, advanced payments of compensation. It is, of course, our duty as an insurer to help, especially during a crisis, certainly a crisis that have been lasting for several weeks. We also know, unfortunately, that these types of events are becoming increasingly frequent.
Following along those lines, we must collectively change our approach in terms of settlement of claims towards a prevention and systematic adjustment of our territories. I would dream that all stakeholders, especially public authorities, rapidly be in partnership with private players to rapidly improve our country's adjustment and resilience that is necessary of our country to climate risks. AXA, from the very start, was a major active player in regard to climate transition, and today, we're continuing on this path, confirming our trajectory and our commitment, because this is the condition for effectiveness over the long term. This is a battle which is essential for us because it is structural, and we cannot relate it to temporary situations. Of course, after the presentations, we can exchange and interact about all your questions.
We will now deep dive into the detail of the 2025 performance. I have with me Guillaume Borie , Alban de Mailly Nesle , and Mathieu Godart , who will present their part when it comes to the annual 2025 business. Following these presentations, certainly, we will answer your questions from the audience and from journalists joining remotely. Starting with the results as a whole, we can see that 2025 turned out to be a historic year for AXA. Why historic? Well, because we achieved record performances across all our business lines in all our markets. Our premium reached EUR 116 billion, which represents a 6% uplift versus 2024.
This demonstrates, obviously, the strength of our sales momentum, the quality of our offerings, and above all, the relevance of our strategy, which is, as a matter of fact, first and foremost, clearly based on organic growth. Such growth is also profitable. You can see that the 6% at the top are repeated at the bottom. Now, the underlying earnings net, in net terms, is increasing to EUR 8.4 billion. If you exclude AXA IM, which we sold in the middle of 2025, such increase is even at 9%, and this reflects, by the way, the technical excellence year after year. Underlying earnings per share are increasing by 8%, and if you recall, in our plan in which we find ourselves, the target range was between 6% and 8%.
In other words, we are at the high end of the target range. I would also like to highlight that the net income is up by 26% and is amounting to EUR 9.8 billion in 2025. Of course, we benefited from the capital gains through the sale of AXA IM. In a situation, in a geopolitical economic situation which is not steady, it is absolutely essential to have a very solid balance sheet. If you see that our solvency ratio, which is the ultimate expression of our, the balance sheet solidity, has increased by 9% at 224%, well, today we are in a situation that is extremely comfortable, where we can overcome all these uncertainties that surround us without being affected very much.
The board of directors of AXA, following these very good results, is proposing to AXA shareholders a dividend of EUR 2.32 per share, representing an uplift of 8%. The board, as well, has approved a new share buyback program for a maximum amount of EUR 1.25 billion. We are convinced that in 2026, which represents the final year of our strategic plan, the current one, we will achieve our goals with an increase in the underlying earnings per share. That will be at the high end of our target range, as I said, between 6% and 8%. These results are the fruit of a huge commitment from our employees, our agents, our partners, and I would like to thank them very warmly.
Our employees, I mean, our agents and our partners, but in particular, all our clients, to whom we owe this excellent performance. I will now, would like to deep dive into these numbers. As I told you, all our business lines have contributed to our beautiful performance in 2025, whether it's in terms of premium rise or the underlying earnings. Such earnings reflect our very good strategic choices, but also the very good execution of our plan. All our indicators are green, and all the engines are running high. The excellence of our teams, the satisfaction of our clients, the our expense control, and our technological transformation. Guillaume, Alban, as well as Mathieu, will now deep dive into further numbers in a few minutes regarding these numbers again. Now, looking our business model, today, it is very well balanced and diversified.
This allows us to be relevant, but also competitive when it comes to demand for protection and innovative products through long-term development. Risks related to the development of new technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, data centers, energy transition, are spawning new needs, but at the same time, for, it is for personal lines and for retailers and corporations. Secondly, we see that demographic changes with the aging of the population around the globe is leading to reinforced demand for retirement savings products or health-related insurance products. Lastly, insurance needs for individuals or families with low income also are a major demand, which we have started to address. AXA is very well positioned to meet such needs, thanks to the qualities which are, as I said, the result of our group's transformation in the past decade. What is it exactly?
It is the power and the diversity of our distribution networks when it comes to our agents and our direct franchises, or again, the partnerships we have with intermediaries. Also, the strong technical and operational excellence, especially with AXA XL, regarding new risks that companies are facing. Also, it is due to the size, which allows very strong diversification and also moving better to scale in the field of technological innovation, for example. Lastly, and this for us is the major factor, it is a trusted brand. It is a significant improvement of customer satisfaction for several years now. One our major qualities is also our entrepreneurial DNA. Since the very beginning, which prompts us to innovate, to service our clients, and grab opportunities coming from new technologies. I would like to share with you two examples.
The first one is the acquisition of Prima in Italy. Prima, a tech insurer, which we acquired in 2025, is strengthening our distribution capabilities in Italy. More broadly in Europe, this acquisition provides us with a latest generation technological platform designed for direct distribution and via digital channels, which we can gradually roll out and mutualize for the benefit of the various entities of the group. Prima supplements, therefore, our historic network of agents, brokers, and banking partners with a direct insurance offering, which allows us to broaden our customer base, in particular, when it comes to the younger generation and customers who have low income. Second example now is our strategy when it comes to in artificial intelligence.
We are convinced that it will transform, the insurance business for the benefit of our customers and will allow us to capture new opportunities. Our employees today are highly involved in the use related to AI in our business. A recent internal barometer, an internal one, shows that 70% of our people are optimistic when it comes to the future benefits coming from AI. As you can see on the slide, thanks to AI, we are moving forward the major levers of insurance for better risk pricing, better service quality, and better customer experience, speeding up of technological developments for our coders. To bring on board our people, and this is the most important, with AI, it's not the technological challenge. We are investing very strongly in our employees' training.
It is our duty because we do know that our success depends on their them embracing our strategy and using these new tools and the trust in these new tools. AXA's performance is being carried out for the benefit of all these partners and the stakeholders, and from the very beginning, it was one of the fundamental priorities that we had. I have in mind, in particular, our clients, to whom we have paid out last year nearly EUR 50 billion in compensation. I have in mind, of course, our employees, to whom we have paid EUR 7.2 billion in wages and bonuses. They are the key to the success of the group. We are a major investor.
EUR 40 billion each year, we invest into the economy. Last year, we paid nearly EUR 13 billion in taxes of all sorts and social charges, of which 36.7% in France. Likewise, we launched the AXA Fund for Human Progress. It comes with EUR 60 million per year. This allows us to sustain projects that have an impact through the four major pillars for us, which is heritage, nature, science, and inclusion. We have also confirmed our commitments towards a climate transition by topping our investment goal. Lastly, we've also rewarded our shareholders, who are essential for the financial stability of AXA, especially our first shareholder, who are the Mutuelles AXA. Our shareholders are also our employees. Over 36% of them are shareholders.
Now, looking forward now to the coming year, our priorities are straightforward: execute our current plan and, at the same time, prepare the future success of AXA. This future is based on four pillars. First of all, turn AI into a major lever, not only in terms of efficiency, but also for better customer experience. Turn AXA into more efficient to show agility in an environment which is constantly on the move. Thirdly, we also, we want to allocate even more our capital towards growth opportunities that create the highest level of value. Lastly, we want to shore up and strengthen our resilience even further, thanks to good diversification and to a solid balance sheet.
I will thank you very much, and I will now turn it over to Guillaume Borie, who will now deep dive into the details of our lines of business. Thank you.
Hello, everyone. I'm delighted to be with you this morning, and for the first time in my new role, to review the very high-quality performance, as mentioned by Thomas Buberl. Well, business being fired by all its engines, as you can see on this page. Business performing very strongly, underpinned by a very fine performance from all of our markets and from all of our geographies. We are especially satisfied with the performance posted by AXA XL. You may know that the market today in commercial lines for large risks is a market which has become more competitive. In such a competitive environment, AXA XL has posted a very fine fiscal 25, with revenue up, driven by growth in market share in the most profitable business activities and the most promising business lines across the world.
Remember that AXA XL has a presence the world over to serve and support all of its clients, and its operating cycles are different from one region to the next and from one business line to the next. The discipline for AXA XL is to tap into the most promising regions in the world, and this is demonstrated by underlying earnings strongly up. Very strong business momentum can be seen across all of our areas, with strong growth in premiums, both in France, in Europe, and in our markets in Asia, Africa, and the other emerging markets. I will also want to emphasize that we posted great profitability levels, and underlying results in Europe, covering eight countries with operations which are performing extremely well.
In 2025, we have supported the organic growth track of the group, while delivering results which have increased across all our business lines and across all of our geographies. Digging deeper into each and every business line, starting with P&C. For the property and casualty business, as Thomas Buberl mentioned, we are posting an excellent year, very close to the perfect copy, if I may say, as we've been improving all of our P&C indicator. The loss ratio down, expense ratio down, with operating efficiencies being achieved across all our operations. Investment income up with release over a prior year better.
All in all, underlying earnings growing by 9%, which have been driven by improved business across the boards, as well as the intrinsic trends fueling our business operations. How have we generated this performance in fiscal 2025? On the back of very strong execution discipline by all of the teams, on the back of their ability to adapt their organic growth strategy to the reality of each regions. In property and casualty business, we have 3 business activities of the same size. The retail business, mainly in France and Europe, the mid-market and small and medium-sized companies, and our large risk and reinsurance business covered by AXA XL.
These three business areas follow different trends. We have to adapt our momentum depending on the reality of the markets. For retail and mid-market and SME insurance business in 2025, we were able to keep improving our margins, which operate at a historic level, while growing the market share across all of our geographies. This strategy to grow our market share was especially accelerated in the retail lines, where our net contribution reached EUR 1.7 million new contracts over the year, which is a historic high.
For the large and specialty risks under AXA XL, as I mentioned, we are focusing on profitable growth in those business lines and in those geographies where we believe we can still gain ground, while making sure that our margins are stable and AXA XL's margins remain stable in the insurance business in fiscal 2025, in a more competitive market. As you can see, this is a strength of our diversified model, especially with AXA XL, where, as Thomas Buberl mentioned, we've been benefiting from significant growth opportunities in new types business: energy transition insurance, cyber insurance, with our capacity to support large technology developments, including the setting up of new data centers and large infrastructure projects. Across all these business operations, there is a profitable growth path, which is reflected in the very fine performance we posted in fiscal 25.
Very fine performance, as I said, very close to the perfect copy in P&C. Having said that, we do not want to be overly complacent, and we're convinced that we can go even further and higher in the next few years by focusing on a few key priorities. Among those, I will mention two which are of especially great importance for us. In retail insurance and in commercial insurance, we want to improve the retention of our clients. This will involve increased investments in customer experience, in improving pricing strategies as well, in order to retain our best customers, while accelerating the number of contracts and products they get from us. The second key priority will be that we'll continue to massively invest into technology and artificial intelligence to keep improving our technical excellence.
The first area where we can generate new gains and efficiencies on the back of technology and AI, will be in improving the sophistication of our pricing mechanisms, in better managing our claims, and this is true for all of our property and casualty business operations. This will enable us, in the next few years, to keep expanding and growing in this business area with very attractive margins, among the best in the industry. The goal being to gain market share across all of our geographies. Moving on to life, health, and savings insurance. The momentum here as well, has been very positive. In this business, you know that we have accelerated the renewal and revamping of our offerings in the last few years to reposition ourselves on a growth and market share gain path.
We have three segments, which account for 1/3 of the business. We have protection, we have health, and we have savings. In each of these segments, we are determined to gain more market share. How will we be doing this? On the back of the efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness of our offerings. Now, effectiveness, efficiency, and competitiveness of our offerings in health and protection will involve us innovating more in these offerings to better support and service our clients in their health needs. In several countries, we acquired health centers. We developed services to support and accompany patients. This was the case in Mexico, this was the case in Ireland, and we'll keep doing this because we're convinced that this will be a factor for differentiation to tap into profitable growth.
In the context of this strategy, we are capable of both offering better client experience, better standards of service, while better controlling the costs connected with claims management and the services we are offering our clients. In the field of protection, we keep accelerating the pace with very strong sales momentum, especially in Japan, in Switzerland, in fiscal 2025, this was driven by our ability to offer solutions which combine with savings products and services. Talking about savings, in savings, our goal is very bold and high to go back on a conquering mood, with an increase of net inflows across all geographies, including France, with net inflows posting very attractive margins because we've revamped our offerings, making them more cost-effective, more competitive, more innovative, targeting all of our client segments.
In such a context, the disposal of AXA IM was a new milestone and a new step towards these achievements. Number one, this disposal makes it possible to enter into a strategic partnership with a more significant operator. We now benefit from economies of scale, making our offerings more competitive, and this party, BNP Paribas Asset Management, is now capable of offering even more comprehensive solutions, especially on ETFs and on the side of equities. This change in our business model makes it possible to purely focus on our insurance business and in savings and pension products and services. Our customers expect that we provide comprehensive solutions and services, which also cover insurance-related risk connected with the aging of population.
In more and more countries, this is what we've been doing by combining our savings and pension products with protection products, with health products and services. We've been starting to do that in several countries, and this combination of offerings is compounded by our ability to offer investment solutions across all types of asset managers in an open architecture. Here again, this will be a factor for growth and expansion in the future, which will make it possible for us to tap into the very numerous growth opportunities which we may benefit from in those markets: health, protection, savings, and pension products, which Thomas mentioned earlier. In a nutshell, in life and health business operations, we've been expanding, growing our revenues. All engines are firing strongly across all geographies, and underlying earnings significantly up 7%.
The combination of the growth of underlying earnings of the P&C and Life and Savings have made it possible to post underlying earnings of core insurance operations growing by 9%. Extremely strong growth to reach a historic high. You can see that the engines are firing strongly, making us in a position where we generate extremely attractive margins, which makes it possible for us to look into the future with great confidence and to look into organic growth. The group, as it is positioned today, enables us to go for in each of our market, in each of our business lines, to go for organic growth by controlling what's is within our control, what we may and can control.
Added to this, we have a historic opportunity, which is to use and utilize artificial intelligence solutions to generate extra performance in a group which is already extremely efficient. This is what you have on the next page. Very strong opportunity to pioneer the way in the insurance industry on how to utilize artificial intelligence solutions. Truly, in the last few weeks, we've heard that for incumbent operators like the insurance companies, AI is seen as a challenge, but for us, with Thomas and the group, we see AI more as an opportunity, as a unique opportunity to rethink the way we interoperate with our customers. We believe we have unique assets to successfully pull off this major change and transformation.
The first asset is the robustness and quality of our distribution channels, which will remain a key pillar for us, and which now, on the back of AI, will have the opportunity to be more efficient, more productive, and to focus more on what they do best, i.e., being on the front line with their customers. We have a great example of that in France, with the deployment of a chatbot, which is being used daily by all of our agents in France. It's called SmartInAXA , and our tied agents and their teams can better support and service their clients when they come to them for advice on insurance-related products. The second competitive advantage we have to successfully pull off this change is our scaling up momentum.
We have pockets deep enough to massively invest to use agentic AI to scale it up across the group and to generate concrete efficiencies. Let me just share one number, 3.5 billion documents today. 3.5 billion documents reside on our servers in AXA, which offer as many data points we can use to better control our pricing, our claim management, the client experience, so that we don't ask our clients four times the same type of information, making us more efficient, more excellent. To win this technology battle, we have a very attractive brand. This is key, of course, because in this transformational change, our capacity to attract the best talents will be a critical success factor.
In the last few months, we've recruited more than 900 data scientists, as well as data engineers. Today they are working across the world to improve our data models and to develop AI solutions, services, and applications, which are gradually being used by all of our experts. To succeed in AI, the first thing you need is fundamental technical and technological knowledge and skills. Machines don't learn by themselves. We have thousands of experts who are specialists in their field, who know all the ins and outs. The rules we apply day in, day out, are a key asset to move faster and to pioneer the way in this transformational change.
Excellence, outstanding performance for a record year for AXA, a positioning towards organic growth, thanks to record-level margins and a capacity to tap into the revolution of AI. These are as many factors which give us a great level of confidence and trust in the future. I will now turn over to our CFO, Alban de Mailly Nesle.
Hello, everyone. I will share with you a few specifics regarding our figures, starting with the P&C business. As you understood, everything is green. It's starting with our P&C revenue that grew by 5%, 4% on commercial lines and 7% on personal lines, which reflects actually what Guillaume said previously about the fact that we gained 1.7 million of new contracts. We are very satisfied of this very dynamic commercial growth. When we look now at our margins, combined ratio hits a record level of 90.6%. It is partly due to the fact that 2025 turned out to be less heavy in terms of net cats than on the long-term average. It's not true in France, where last year we were hit by a number of events, especially in hailstorms.
On the whole, when you look our geographies, the year was better than the average, but that's a small part of the improvement of our margins. They improved really across all our businesses, thanks to efforts in terms of pricing, underwriting, and how we manage claims and our own costs. Our margin improved by one point in personal lines and point on commercial lines, excluding XL and with XL, and as Guillaume said, where competition has been keener, they remained steady, which is a very good result. In addition to these technical margins, come along investment, financial income, which are strongly higher. Well, they include more risk. We don't need to take more risks to have these additional investment revenues.
Our balance sheet is becoming bigger with the growth of our businesses, we have a number of obligations which are coming to maturity and had been underwritten several years back when rates were extremely low, and which are replaced now by bonds with higher interest rates. there's an mechanics here about improvement of our investments. overall, when you add higher premiums, higher margins, cost ratio lower, and investment revenue, growth is at 9% of our P&C earnings. Now, moving to life and health business, a very good momentum again. I'm not coming back to the fact that we had excellent inflows of EUR 5.4 billion, exceeding EUR 1 billion in 2024. we can see the commercial momentum in which we are headed.
Beyond this, our margins also improved as well in that sector. First of all, in terms of protection and health, our margins improved by 20 basis points. This, whilst we faced an event that was unexpected, that is in Mexico, the Mexican government decided that VAT on claims would no longer be recoverable, which cost us EUR 1 billion and 70 basis points of margin. In health, otherwise in life, otherwise, would have increased by 90 basis points. In 2026, we'll try to correct that Mexican issue. In savings as well, we have better margins simply because we had higher volumes, especially thanks to inflows, but also because there's a revaluation of our assets, especially related to shares, related unit-linked accounts. There are margins that also are higher.
Therefore, we have a 6% growth in savings, whilst they are at 15% where growth is 15% in health and protection. There again, a very good result on the whole in health and life, growing by 7% our earnings. Now, looking at the whole across the group. Next slide. Nine percent in P&C, 7% in life and health, and by the way, we sold mid of the year, AXA IM, so we lost about half of the earnings compared to 2024, and our holding cost remained stable.
Growth of our underlying earnings overall at 6%, and as Guillaume said, "If we take aside AXA IM, we would have had a growth of 9% of our underlying earnings." Add to this, elements that we put into our net income, especially capital gain that we made on the sale of AXA IM, and then the net total income is EUR 9.8 billion, which is up by 26%. If I go back now to our underlying earnings, and if I look at the underlying earnings per share, it is up by 8%, which is quite at the top end of our range, which is a target one. An excellent result. Lastly, a few final words about the solvency factor.
We looked our commercial momentum, our ability to improve our margin. What is important is our financial solidity, because it is important for our long-term efficiency and the trust coming from our clients. The solvency ratio increased by 8 points over the year, moving from 2016 to 2024, 224% above all generation organic capital, to which we are accustomed. You also know that when Solvency II came into force about 10 years ago, there was the grandfathering clause, that is the subordinated debt we had at the time, were deemed still valid for 10 years, so until the 1st of January 2026, date at which they are no longer part in to the calculation of solvency.
That's why in the 1st of January 2026, what remains of subordinated debt from that time past, falls away and comes and costs us 10 solvency level. We're still at 215%, which is a lovely, a very robust balance sheet. You also know that Europe has looked into Solvency II to see once again, 10 years after its implementation, if there were things to be that needed to be corrected. They've found generally that probably there was too much prudence in calibrating Solvency II. When we compute our solvency ratio with what will come into force next year in 2027, that is. We will be regaining 17 points of solvency on the first of the quarter of 2027.
On an equal basis, on a like-for-like basis, we will be at 232% solvency on a pro forma basis, very solid. I wanted to end this with this. Very good commercial momentum and also beautiful robustness of our balance sheet. I will now turn it over to Mathieu, who will speak about France.
Hello, everyone. Well, I'm delighted to see you again this morning to share an excellent fiscal 2025 for AXA in France, a year which is the second year of our Unlock the Future plan. We heard a lot the word "engines" in this presentation, AXA France is one of the essential engines of the group. I'm delighted to share with you what makes us unique in our market at AXA France. In 2025, we've consolidated our leadership position, i.e., a robust leader, diversified leader, a leader which is capable of meeting all the needs of French citizens and French businesses, be it in health and protection areas, be it in property and casualty, in the savings and retirement areas. Very well-balanced profile, as you can see on this slide.
Very well-balanced across the various business lines. In that year, 2025, which was a dense, uncertain year, with some degree of concerns for our clients, we've kept servicing, supporting our clients very strongly so, be it in the savings and retirement field, to help them prepare for their retirement with additional income. We saw the appetite of French people with higher saving levels this year. Also, to operate as their health-related partners with our protection and prevention offers, and also showing our ability to help them through a number of natural catastrophes.
We'd like to take this opportunity to extend my support and warm thoughts to the victims of Storm Nils in France, as well as thank all our teams and tied agents who have been working with the victims right from the beginning. This leadership position is anchored into a relationship of trust across France, which was established in the last 40 years, and today, more than 8 million clients are trusting us, more than one household out of five, with business leaders, and trusting us with the need to protect their properties with the property and casualty coverage, and as well, with the employee benefits.
Every day there are some 33,000 of us to support the agents, brokers, supporting our clients, working with them throughout their life projects, and also being present with them in tough times. Also, I wanted to conclude this slide by emphasizing one point, i.e., our tangible role in contributing to the French economy. We've been investing EUR 10 billion in the real world French economy, especially to support infrastructure project, real estate projects, and supporting business and corporate project. Also, by engaging at the very local level with trade professionals, and also by paying out more than EUR 40 million per day to meet customer claims. So very close to our customers, very present in our region.
Fiscal 2025 was an excellent year, as I said in my introductory remarks, with excellent performance being posted. Revenues up by 6%, to EUR 31 billion. P&C business expanding, up 7% year-on-year, and health and protection business up 4% year-on-year, with our savings and pensions business growing 7%. Revenues are at their highest level for the last 10 years. Underlying earnings reached EUR 2.2 billion at its highest level, and this performance is driven by all of our business lines.
We owe this growth to our network of tied agents, which is present everywhere in our regions, and we've been investing massively into this distribution channel with more than 400 new distributors, strengthening our current teams. We've invested into the training and development of these distributors and agents by giving them new skills and new training with new modern tools, as Guillaume said earlier, so that they can better serve and service our clients every day, including thanks to AI solutions. All this has been operating well and has been posting extremely positive growth momentum. More than 500,000 new contracts have been signed in the course of 2025.
More than 250,000 new clients have been signing with us, and AUMs grew by EUR 3 billion in individual savings. Very strong performance to shore up our leadership position. Above and beyond this fine performance, I want to review our commitments, which is a very important area. Number one, on the customer front. We'll be talking about climate and prevention. On the customer front, fiscal 2025 was an opportunity for us to meet a number of these tangible challenges our societies are confronted with. Let me start with marital, domestic violence. More than 5 million policyholders today can benefit from legal protection and assistance, as well as emergency rehousing, so that they place themself in safety.
This initiative is significant and stands us out. We are extremely proud of this initiative that we have conducted jointly with a number of community organizations, and I want to pay tribute to their work and hail them. We also keep meeting the challenges of inclusion, the goal being that each and everyone may have access to insurance services. Today, 1.8 million clients, low-income clients, have insurance coverage via AXA France and via our direct business, and we keep adapting our products and services so that we can serve these customers even better. I also want to emphasize on our preventative efforts, as Thomas said in his introductory remarks, especially on the climate front.
We've been supporting more than 300 city councils which have been required by law to draw up so-called municipal safeguard plans with respect to climate requirements, because city and town councilors sometimes are at a loss to meet these technical requirements, and we're happy to help them doing so in the field of prevention. Also, I want to speak about prevention in the field of health, with an initiative that we have just launched, which consists in partially reimbursing the so-called genomic test. Now, what are they about, genomic tests?
Well, genomic tests make it possible for women with breast cancer to test the relevance of chemotherapy, to make sure what would be the most appropriate chemotherapy for them, and possibly sometimes to avoid chemotherapy, which may be traumatic. We come in support to support this new scientific progress through this initiative. These commitments have made our teams proud, have made our agents and distributors very proud, all those who are operating under the AXA France brand, that it is our DNA to be capable of actively contributing to societies, playing a key role in it. Thank you very much. I will turn over to Thomas for his concluding remarks.
Thank you, Mathieu. You will have understood by now, AXA achieved a record performance in 2025. We achieved historic results in all our business lines in every region. This demonstrates a good commercial momentum, and more broadly, the relevance of our strategic plan called Unlock the Future. We succeeded in growing our underlying earnings per share by 8% at the top end of our target range, whilst reinforcing our prudence margins in order to prepare the future. In 2026, we will carry on implementing our strategic plan, called Unlock the Future. On the basis of this performance, we are very confident about our ability to reach the highest level of our goal to grow our underlying earnings per share in 2026. We will also lay the foundation of the next plan, which we will be presenting on the 21st of September.
Our ambition is to continue to be a champion in our industry, i.e., the preferred insurer of our clients, a company able to attract the best talents while creating value for our shareholders and our employees and, of course, for our clients. Thank you. We'll now move on to your questions. Let's start in the room.
Jean-Charles Champagnat, Investir newspaper. My question bears upon the development of AI, which could increase competition. Could you explain to us several things? First of all, describe deep dive that is into the different distribution networks that you have available, and then the costs associated. Are there any possibilities to cut down distribution costs, including in networks outside of the direct distribution, maybe the employee networks or the tied agents network?
Perhaps, maybe could you specify one figure? You gave a combined ratio of 90.6% in P&C. Could you break it down, the cost ratio, et cetera, and the cost in terms of claims? Regarding the latter, could you specify the changes when it comes to the net catastrophes in terms of the rates there?
Very well. You have a third question? That's one single question. It's chiefly on costs. On the first question, I will quickly make an introduction, and the best thing we'll, after that, to go into concrete examples. Certainly, Patrick Cohen is in this room, who is heading Europe, and Mathieu Godart, who is heading AXA France.
After some introductory remarks by me, I would like them to show you what AI is really about on a daily basis, and in particular, when it comes to our distribution networks. Then, Alban, could you give us the specifics about the combined ratio in terms of costs and claims and the net catastrophes? In general, for us, as I said, there's an opportunity that is significant. We really want to use that opportunity, and essentially, there are two fields of implementation. One part, which is in relation to our clients, in other words, how can we really improve the relationship and the interface with our clients? Here, the distribution centers are key.
Our idea here is to work, of course, on the automation front, on the customization of client interface in regard to service, but also help our general agents, our distribution networks, to use properly AI in order to improve a customer relationship. We have a second field of application, a second scope, which is about how we assess the insured risk and how we can prevent it. An insurer has available lots of data, and as Guillaume mentioned it, as well as Guillaume, we are working at length about the quality of data, because if you load up a car with not the right gas, it doesn't work well. That's why having good data banks and also have the ability with AI to use non-structured data.
For example, if we insure this room here, the risk engineer comes around and tries to understand the danger of potential fire. He will make a PDF report that we can use once, but if we want to use it several times for other risks, you have to be able to make use of such piece of information. AI, for the first time, is helping us do that. In other words, assessing a risk on the one hand, then the question of prevention. In other words, what can we do to avert the next claim will be much more specific and precise, and these are the two areas on which we are working as we it comes to the implementation of AI.
Patrick, first maybe, then Mathieu, can you give us even more concrete examples of your two geographic perimeters to illustrate this?
Thank you very much for your question, sir. I will focus on where we see the highest potential to generate growth and best serve and support our clients. We are very excited by application per use, which is being mainstreamed across all of our entities in Europe. Now, to be very concrete, with respect to growth and expansion, today, AI makes it possible for us to have an underwriter prepare for their work so that they can refine their offers and provide more offers, more proposals in a shorter lead time, getting information from the claims, from the various brokers, from the agents, processing more files to generate more growth. Another interesting example is that the AI solution will give us the right offer with the right price at the right time to the right client.
We are using agentic AI, which in a predictive manner, are able to identify, detect needs, and basically automatically creates email and correspondence and communication, which are totally customized fit the individual situations of the clients. Very interesting. The last example is how we'll be training and developing our agents, providing them with advisory tools in their client interactions, and we'll be ramping up their skill sets and expertise on our products. We'll be very quickly generating videos, tutorials, and training sessions for use by our agents. Much for growth. The second very promising area is obviously that of client servicing. Now, AI is now capable of solving a great number of pain points which you have in the field of insurance.
Obviously, one of them is not to repetitively have to describe your events when you have incurred a claim and you report it. To also radically shorten the lead time for reporting in a seamless process where you do not have to repetitively send piece of document. This is being done in Germany, in Italy, in Switzerland, at scale, with a very tangible example. Let me share it.
Today, in our claims management centers, the claims handlers now have what we call an assistant, which basically put them into cruising mode, i.e., when they interact with client, the AI tool will suggest an answer, will get the right data at the right time, so that the claims managers focus on empathy, on better serve the client, on speak with them, listen to them, satisfy the clients better, and making them more effective, more productive.
Thank you, Patrick. Mathieu?
Thank you. First, the examples that Patrick Cohen has just reviewed are examples of daily use. I will focus on one area which is important, it is that of technology. We've obviously been using AI to refine and customize our pricing schemes. Patrick Cohen mentioned the development work we did to clean and refine our client data.
We now are able to update our pricing mechanisms, making them more dynamic, enabling us to generate a more profitable growth. Combating fraud is of great importance as well, because AI is not only, sorry, being used by corporates, but pirates, hackers, and fraudsters use it. AI makes it possible to detect those tricks and those fraudulent schemes. The last area where AI is of great importance is with respect to prevention, especially in car fleets, where we can sparse and review claims data to identify potential preventative measures, which we submit to businesses so that they can lower their claims ratio and lower their prices connected with their car fleet coverage.
So much for these very tangible examples. The combined ratio is down 0.4%, broken down into 0.3% of improved current loss ratio, 0.3% of improved expense ratio, and 0.4% of improved net CAT factor. Since we considered that all this was an upside, we decided to be cautious, more cautious than usual, on our reserving, and we released less prior year developments in an amount of 0.7. So 0.3, 0.3, 0.7 minus 0.07. Thank you.
Next question, please. We have someone... Right, let's go from left to right.
Hello, everyone. Thierry Gouby for News Assurances Pro. I have two questions. The first, to pick up on what my friend here asked about AI. You mentioned, quote, "A massive investment," unquote. Can you give us the order of magnitude for the AXA Group, and can you tell us what would be your AI budget in the next strategic plan? The second question links up with Africa. I would like to know if you're going to be revising your position in the African continent, given the new geopolitical dynamics in those countries, and also your interest in Africa Re. Can you speak about these items, please?
Thank you, Thierry. I suggest that Guillaume answers the first question, and I will be answering about Africa.
As to your first question, what you need to have in mind is that some 4% of our technology spending is for capital investments.
The rest is for the running cost of our IT systems. We are making efforts to increase this budget every year. We are determined to increase our investment budget because the investment needs into AI will obviously be increasing. We are not giving any more accurate, detailed number, but in the next strategic plan, on the twenty-first of this September, when we disclose it, we'll give you more detail on that. What's important to note is that this growing investment is a real opportunity to start laying down the foundations and future vectors of growth going forward. We are accelerating this spend, which increases our total expenditures, and we can do this now because our technical margins are of excellent quality, and also because we have other pools and reservoirs to improve our day-to-day expenditures.
Among these levers and tools, I included all the operating excellence drivers and measures with respect to offshoring some assignments, greater disciplines in the purchasing procurement, so that we've generated efficiencies. Alban mentioned how it's impact the P&C combined ratio, and these efficiencies are higher than the additional capital expenditures we'll be investing. With such investments, we know that we are paving the way for the future growth, and that there is a real synergy which will make it possible for them to achieve the efficiencies across the value chain.
Now on Africa today, we are in a few countries where we have been re-focusing in the last 10 years. In those countries, our positioning is significant. Let me mention those countries. First and foremost, it's Morocco and then the CIMA countries, in other words, Senegal, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Gabon. In addition to that, we are in Egypt and in Nigeria. Our positioning is highly focused, which is growing significantly with a lot of success in the offing. Certainly, a stake in Africa Re participation , and it helps us go beyond through stakes in the reinsurance business in the countries where we are not. Africa, it's true, is still part of geopolitical tensions that could lead us to rethink about this.
Look, I think the other way around, in other words, the greatest opportunity that missed, that Europe hasn't seen yet, is that its future perhaps is more in the south than on the east or in around the west. If you think about this in terms of migration flows and also the demographic issue in Europe, if you think about the issue of the energy aspect in Europe and food safety and security, you will find yourself very quickly looking at Africa. This is why I believe that Africa will be a significant, very significant continent for Europe.
Next question. Bloomberg. I have several questions.
On AI first, you mentioned every kind of opportunity and the positive effects to come. I have a question, though, about the fears you might have on this, about the potential coming of new entrants in the market. To what extent do you think that the regulation, which is quite strong in the insurance business, can it help you with regard to these questions? What about the language models? If we look at the OpenAI chat or others, tomorrow, do you think that these models, these agents, can offer insurance contracts? Could it be distribution channels, and to what extent then will AXA make sure that you're really present and well-listed? My second question is about the floods in France in the last few days.
An estimate that was given last week by the Ministry of Economy, which assessed it at EUR 1 billion, it could even go up to EUR 3 billion, allegedly. Do you have any estimates about the share of AXA with regard to these floods in France? Now, my last question is about the sale several years ago. There was the life insurance business and the pensions in run-off, and you started discussions with Athora at the time, which didn't materialize. In 2024, you had mentioned at the time, macroeconomic conditions that were not adverse at that time. Now that they have changed, are you still open to this portfolio?
Thank you for your 3 questions. Just to specify, in your third question, you do speak about the Alban.
The German or the Alban portfolio.
First of all, I will yield to Mathieu, who will answer about floods in France and the potential estimates there, in, and then I will take the first and third question. Mathieu?
As regards news, it's two types of events we are facing. On the one hand, there is the storm, the damage created by the storm, and on the other hand, you have floods. It's important to differentiate these two, because in this kind of situation, traditionally, we are in a position to quickly assess the damage related to the storm. But when it comes to flood-related damages, the, the time to estimate the damage when people make statements, it's much longer for very pragmatic reasons, because you have to wait for the...
You have no longer any floods, so that we can send experts to be able to assess the damage that clients are facing. At this stage, in terms of damage regarding the storm, we have an estimate around EUR 80 million net, about 20,000 claims. With regard now to floods, we have a few thousands of claims that have been made, which probably will supplement that amount, but in proportions less, far less sizable, because most of the damage are more with the storm than with the floods. Even though in terms of people feeling really distressed, it's more people who are.
It's more the victims of floods that we are trying to support more, because a tile that fell from the roof is not so bad as having water in your kitchen, in your home. To supplement this relative to the figures that were announced by the market, what do you think about? Is it, does it make sense? The first EUR 1 billion that was announced is consistent. I didn't know about the EUR 3 billion. I think we are in ranges that vary very much at this stage, and it's always very difficult because there are two types of claims on or damages. On the one hand, you have a physical damage of a home, a house, of a factory, which is fairly easy to assess.
On the other hand, you have business loss if a company cannot work, and this is where it's difficult to judge. This is why it's important with the figures that come in too early. The two other questions, let me start with the one about the life insurance divestiture. In the last plan, remember, we had a goal, which was to cut down a few life portfolios and the reserves that come along with this. That portfolio, well, the life insurance in Germany, and it's only part of it because that's a former vintage US portfolio that AXA had bought in 2006 at the time. It was really the last portfolio that we had to sell or not.
At the time, we were not really so interested in selling, Athora approached us. We always look if someone talks to us, we always look if a deal can make sense or not, and in that case, together with the regulator, we decided such deal would not be realized. That portfolio, when you look at it, is very well capitalized with Solvency II, which is standalone, which is very high, and today there's no reason really to think again about a sale. This is why you notice the earnings we have today are earnings that are not based on exceptional items, because we have a sale here or restructuring of our portfolio there. It's really about growth and organic performance and growth without any special effects or exceptions.
Now we really want to focus on our organic development without finding ourselves out of focus and focusing on topics that are not contributing to the core of the business. We're focusing on the organic aspects. I'm not asking myself this question. This is why I haven't been approached. Now, on AI, first question: the fear about new entrants. Of course, AI will create newcomers, as you saw this taking place in the digital revolution that we saw several years back. We saw newcomers come along. Some of them survived, but most of them either did not survive or chose an interesting fate, which is instead of competing with insurance, they create a partnership with insurers so that they can work with them together.
I think the same thing, in most cases, should occur again. We said before, the insurance model is a scale-based model, but we need to modernize it. We need to simplify it, automate it, and customize it, the customer interface. Innovative companies based on AI and on the LLM models will be helpful. This is why, in order to do better this time compared to the digital revolution, we must, from the very outset, try to find partnerships to benefit together from the positive effect of AI on our processes, on the customer interaction. In along those lines, of course, we are working with all the model providers, in particular with Mistral. Question?
Next question.
Yes, Louis Guarino for La Tribune de l'Assurance magazine. Thank you for your presentation, gentlemen. My first question is on the funding of the economy, and the second question is on health. With respect to funding the defense industries, can you tell us a bit more about whether you contribute to the Bpifrance Défense Fund? Have you been ramping up to invest into these funds jointly to the Groupe BPCE? With respect to the health business, Mr. Godart, you spoke about the partial reimbursement of a genomic test to avoid a traumatic chemotherapy.
To the best of my knowledge, you are among the rare insurance companies to offer this, the former French Minister for Health, Yannick Neuder, had said that if these tests were being covered by insurance companies, then the budget of the social security system could be cut. Can you expand on the relationship between insurance companies like yours and the mutual companies and the national health system?
Now, Alban, about the defense industry question now.
We always have considered that the defense related issues were not necessarily strictly speaking in the scope of sustainability. We've always invested into the defense mechanisms in full compliance with the international regulations, and so we keep doing so.
Now, generally speaking, when you look at the funds we are investing into, we'd rather have diversified funds we invest into and not especially exposed to any specific given industry. Obviously, we are looking into this initiative with some degree of interest, but we want to be sure that it will not overexpose us to any given industry.
Maybe say a few words about the defense industry as well. In this field, we have to be always very careful. Investing into an industry is a necessary factor, but it is not enough to totally shore up the defense and the military capacity of a country.
All stakeholders need to be fully aligned in the defense ecosystems, and this is not necessarily the case today, more work has to be done in this respect.
Mathieu Godart , with respect to your question on health, thank you for referring back to this initiative. I believe we are the only insurance companies to partially reimburse this genomic test, and this is why I wanted to highlight it in my presentation. In fact, we are convinced at AXA that with respect to health issues, and you can see this in the current debate about the well-balanced control of health-related costs, is of great importance. We need to move from a therapy-focused model to a prevention-focused model.
We have a fund for scientific research to promote more preventative and prevention-related activities. Now, in this field, I believe that development work should be done jointly with insurance companies, with the national health and security systems, and with the public authorities, so that long-term solutions can be found, so that we may collectively contain this inflation in health and medical costs we are currently confronted with. Basically, with this initiative, AXA is showing its desire to move from a therapy focus to a prevention focus, and there is much more to be done in France.
I also want to pick up on an important part in your question, madam, because we sometimes hear that the national security system competes with the private insurance companies and the mutual companies.
The question is not who does what, but the question really should be: how could we collectively better do things together? All the efforts made by the private companies, combined with all the efforts made by the national systems, should compound to improve the situations. Time is running. Let's take a last question online, for all other questions by people in this auditorium, we may again exchange around a drink or coffee. Last question.
From Valli of Massimiliano Plato. First question is, could you please say a few words about the result in Germany? Second question: The major European primary insurers have been growing for years. Are we heading towards an oligopoly market, and is that what AXA wants? Third question: The major reinsurers are increasingly talking about more targeted risk underwriting, especially in property and casualty reinsurance. Does this affect your business as AXA and/or the primary insurance market in general?
Thank you very much for the three questions. Patrick, if you could talk about the result in Germany. Nancy, if you could talk about the reinsurers and the risk appetite. I think the 2nd question is relatively easy to answer. When you look at the insurance market, in particular in Europe, it is today very fragmented still. Talking about an oligopoly is very far away from the reality. Patrick will talk about the German market in a minute. I have left the German market 10 years ago, but when I left, we still had over 200 insurers in Germany.
It's working?
Yeah, it works.
Yeah. Thank you, Thomas. I think we're still kind of this configuration as it's stand. I thank you for your question 'cause it gives me the opportunity to warmly congratulate the team in Germany for an outstanding year. I'd start by saying that the German team passed EUR 1 billion underlying earning result this year. This is quite an achievement. It's a major improvement, big growth, and very importantly is the quality of the results. We've seen good growth across all line of business. I'm very pleased to see that from a net new contracts perspective, we're gaining customers in Germany. I wanna highlight two areas where I think from a new business standpoint, Germany stood out through product innovation, which are life and saving and health.
We just talked about supplementary health with the previous question. I think Germany really made a difference there in proposing very, very compelling proposition for customers. I would conclude in saying that Germany has an excellent quality of the technical result, which is driven by the use at scale of artificial intelligence, and also in everything I quoted before in terms of serving better customers, making cycle times shorter. Germany is a frontrunner in AXA. Big, big year for them and an excellent result.
It also shows you our philosophy on talents. We always try to find successors who are better than their predecessors. I only made it until EUR 520 million result. Nancy?
Thank you. Regarding the question in around reinsurance, the reinsurance market still is quite profitable. You will see the announcements from the major reinsurers. Over the past two years, they've been targeting their focus on the types of risks they'll bring in, increasing their attachment points and their relationships with their carriers, and also leaving space for alternative capital to come in. From that perspective, while they're still very active in reinsuring their partners, they're very selective on where they'll take risk, and this allows us and a company like AXA, who's very strong in their underwriting, to retain more risk.
Thank you, Nancy. Thank you to all of you for participating, listening, and asking questions. Thanks to the team for being here, for the great result, and for answering the questions. "... " Now is the time to go upstairs to have some more time for informal discussions, and I can see that in this auditorium you have people with more questions. You'll have the opportunity to ask each and every question. Thank you very much, and have a great day.