Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AXA conference call on the AXA Group financial results for the half year 2026. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. We kindly ask that you limit your questions to a maximum of two. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Anu Venkataraman. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining AXA's first half 2026 results call. Presenting the results today are our Group CEO, Thomas Buberl, and our Group Chief Financial Officer, Alban de Mailly Nesle. Joining us for Q&A will be Guillaume Borie and Scott Gunter. With that, I turn over to Thomas.
Thank you, Anu. Good morning to all of you, and thank you very much for joining our first half 2026 earnings call. As we approach the end of our strategic plan, I'm very pleased to report another period of strong and broad-based performance. The numbers we published this morning demonstrate again the strength of our franchise and the consistency of our delivery. When you look in the details, you see that we have delivered a strong organic top-line growth of +5%. We have also delivered +8% Underlying Earnings Per Share growth, which is at the top end of our target range, 6%-8%, while continuing to enhance reserve prudence. All of this leads to the fact that we are generating a very attractive return on equity of 18%.
What is particularly important in times of uncertainty and instability is that our capital position is extremely strong with a Solvency II ratio of 218%. As you see, we're delivering profitable growth while maintaining a very robust balance sheet and further reinforcing the resilience of our business. With these strong results, I will reiterate again our confidence that for full year 2026, we can deliver Underlying Earnings Per Share growth at the upper end of our 6%-8% target range of this plan. When we go to the next page, we can see that these results underscore the quality of our franchise with underlying earnings up 9%, excluding AXA IM, again achieved while further enhancing reserve prudence. This performance demonstrates disciplined execution across growth, margin, and efficiency, fully in line with the commitments of our plan.
In detail, in Life and Health, we delivered strong earnings growth, increasingly balancing the contribution from P&C, where the business remains in excellent shape and continues to operate at best-in-class margins. We've also made very good progress on efficiency, leveraging technology and automation while continuing to invest in our business. This balance between cost discipline and strategic investment is absolutely essential to sustain our competitiveness and the creation of long-term value. You see all operating businesses are performing well with strong results in line with our plan. These results confirm AXA's positioning as an all-weather company able to navigate changing market conditions and to deliver consistent performance over time. We go to the next page, when you look at the earnings growth across our four main geographies, the picture is very good. Every region is contributing positively, and the delivery is both strong and consistent.
This gives us confidence in the durability of our performance. I am particularly pleased with the performance of AXA XL, where pricing has held up better than the market. AXA XL technical margin, excluding the impact of the Middle East, was stable in the first half. I want to particularly thank Scott and his team. They are doing an excellent job managing the difficult cycle. Our franchise today is well-diversified and of high quality across all geographies, all lines of business, and all client segments. We benefit from leading positions in our key markets, and our teams are executing rigorously and consistently against the plan. Also makes me very happy is that our strong capital position, the prudent reserving, and the disciplined risk management give us the flexibility to navigate volatility while remaining focused on the creation of long-term value.
This combination of profitable growth across all major geographies, a well-diversified and high-quality franchise, as well as a strong balance sheet, allows us to absorb shocks, invest confidently in the future growth, but also continue to deliver attractive, sustainable returns for our shareholders as we reach now the final phase of our current strategic plan. From this solid foundation, we are confident in our ability to sustain performance over time. Let me now hand over to Alban, who will take you through the financials in more detail and provide additional color on our results for the first half of 2026. Alban?
Thank you, Thomas. Good morning to you all. Let me now go through the key numbers of the first half, and I will start with P&C. We delivered excellent P&C results with earnings up 6%. As Thomas said, we achieved these results while enhancing our reserve prudence. Performance is strong on all fronts, growth, best-in-class margins, lower non-commission expenses, and a higher investment income. Our P&C combined ratio remained at a strong level, 90.1%, up 10 basis points vs half year 2025, and 30 basis points if you exclude Prima. This 30 basis points increase fully reflects the EUR 0.1 billion losses incurred by AXA XL in the Middle East. If I exclude those Middle East losses, AXA XL Insurance undiscounted loss ratio was stable, while it improved by 50 basis points in commercial lines ex- XL and by 20 basis points in retail.
Excluding Middle East losses, we were able to improve the loss ratio across all our Insurance businesses. Nat Cat was stable at 3.5%, that's below our 4.5% normalized Nat Cat load. Expense ratio was also stable, with a 40 basis points improvement in non-commission expenses offset by higher commissions, those higher commissions reflect a change in business mix. Reliance on PYDs was low at - 1 point. Investment income was also a strong contributor, more than offsetting the EUR 0.1 billion mechanical increase in unwind. This was driven by the growth in the asset base, reflecting business growth and higher yield, supported by reinvestment rates above the average yield of the portfolio. Also disciplined asset reallocation from private equity and real estate into private debt. We expect investment income to remain a tailwind going forward. All our businesses are performing well.
In personal and commercial lines, excluding XL, we are growing volumes in a conducive pricing environment with revenues up 8% and 3% respectively. In personal lines, we had two million net new contracts in this first half vs 1.7 million in the whole year in 2025. This excellent momentum comes with strong margins. Current year combined ratio was down 50 basis points in retail, excluding Prima, and 10 basis points in commercial, excluding XL. Going forward, we intend to leverage this best-in-class profitability to grow further. At AXA XL, we grew earnings by 4% while maintaining AXA XL Insurance combined ratio stable, excluding Middle East losses and with no PYDs. This reflects effective cycle management. By allocating more capital to lines where profitability meets our return figures, we contained price decrease to -1%. We also achieved lower insurance costs, strict expense management, and better investment income.
Going forward, we will continue to deploy capital in lines that are profitable, structurally growing and less cyclical, such as U.S. mid-market, defense and infrastructure, energy transition, autonomous vehicles, and data centers. Overall, these are high-quality results with strong top-line growth, best-in-class margins, and higher investment income. This provides an excellent foundation for future growth. Let me now move on to life and health. Premiums were up 8% and earnings up 11%. Both our short-term and long-term businesses delivered strong performance. In short-term life and health, insurance revenues were up 5%. Technical margins grew by 53% with 130 basis points improvement in the combined ratio, which reached 96%. These results reflect the impact of pricing, underwriting, claim management, and efficiency initiatives we implemented over the past years. We are very pleased with this performance, which provides a strong base for future growth.
In long-term life and health, our efforts to rejuvenate the savings business are also paying off. We see solid momentum with strong top-line growth and further improvement in net flows from EUR 2.2 billion- EUR 3 billion. CSM release grew by 6%. This reflects reserve growth from positive net flows, but also from the interest credited to policyholders in general account and the favorable impact of equity market returns in unit linked. It also includes the CSM release rebasing that we had in the second half of 2025, that we mentioned at full year. This rebasing boosts the growth vs half year 2025 as it did when we compared full year 2025 to full year 2024. We expect continued growth in reserves with the CSM release growth for full year 2026, more in line with our guidance of greater than 3% since full year 2025 release was already rebased.
Overall, very good performance in both short-term and long-term businesses, and we are confident in our ability to sustain this momentum. If we move to this slide, which summarizes our earnings, we delivered 4% Underlying Earnings Per Share growth, but 9% excluding AXA IM. You see that it's a very strong performance on all fronts. Net income was up 9%. At half year 2026, financial flows were EUR -0.2 billion. As you know, since the transition to IFRS 17 or IFRS 9, realized capital gains only include real estate and fixed income. Real estate realized gains are naturally lumpy and they are managed on an annual basis. We had no realized gain in real estate at half year, but we plan to realize our full year target in the second half, and that creates some seasonality in the net income.
Last, UEPS was up 8% at the top end of our target range. We achieved this strong performance while increasing reserve prudence and absorbing a - 3% headwind from the decrease of average foreign exchange rate, mainly U.S. dollar, Hong Kong dollar, and Japanese yen. A word on our Solvency II. Solvency II ratio was at 218% at half year 2026. As you know, on January 1st, our Solvency II ratio was 215%, following the end of the grandfathering period, representing a - 10 points impact vs December 31st, 2025. On top of this impact, our ratio was up three points in the first half of the year driven by the following. First, + 17 points of normalized capital generation, reflecting strong earnings and limited capital needs to fund our growth.
In particular, we benefited from the acceleration of growth in life and savings because growth in life and savings enhances the benefits of group diversification on capital requirements. You know also that there is some small seasonality in the normalized capital generation as there is a bit of seasonality in our underlying earnings. - 12 points from dividends and annual share buybacks as expected, -3 points from economic variance, mainly driven by higher inflation expectations and the widening of government and corporate bond spreads. Overall, strong balance sheet and a very capital efficient model. To conclude on financial performance, I would like to highlight the solid operational improvements of our franchise over the plan. What you see on the screen are the main operational KPIs that we presented to you at the inception of this plan. We are delivering on all of them.
Since full year 2023, we have achieved strong organic growth at 7% CAGR. Our P&C margins improved by 160 basis points, including a 40 basis points impact from losses in the Middle East. In P&C retail and in P&C commercial lines, XL with profitability at excellent level, we do not see the need to improve margins further. Instead, we intend to capitalize on the favorable pricing environment to grow. At AXA XL, we have room to grow earnings, reflecting attractive growth opportunities, but also lower reinsurance costs, disciplined expense management, and higher investment results. In short-term life and health, we did more than fixing the U.K. business.
By scaling pricing and underwriting capabilities, investing in care delivery and pathways, and managing our costs, we achieved strong profitability improvement across entities and increased the resilience of our businesses Going forward, we expect to further expand our margins and capture the opportunities of this structurally growing market. In long-term savings, the rejuvenation of our business is bearing fruit. We rebased the CSM release in the second half of 2025, but we also significantly improved our net flows over the past three years. We expect to sustain this momentum that will fuel our reserves and drive earnings growth over time. Lastly, we enhanced our competitiveness through efficiency gains. Our investments in shoring and automation, as well as the first benefits of AI, are paying off. This track record of execution lays the foundations for sustaining a strong momentum in the next plan.
Thank you, Alban. Let me now wrap up with a brief conclusion before we move to a Q&A. We are on track to close this plan with very strong results. Two of our main financial targets are tracking at the top end of their ranges, and the third is well on track as well. Our execution has been strong, and the transformation initiatives we set out at the beginning of the plan have largely been completed or are firmly embedded in how we operate. We are starting the next chapter from a position of real strength. Earnings are growing at the high end of our ambition. Capital and reserves are very robust, and our margins are best in class. This also means the next plan will not be about catching up from a weak base. It will be about building further on already excellent levels of performance and resilience.
We are confident that even from this strong starting point, we can continue to deliver attractive growth in profits by driving organic growth, deepening our technical excellence, and accelerating efficiency through technology and data while further enhancing the value we deliver to our customers. As you know, we'll present the new strategic plan in detail in September, on the 15th of September in Paris, and then followed by an event on September 21st in London. Given that, I would ask that today's Q&A really focuses on the first half 2026 results and the execution of the current plan, rather than on the specifics of the new plan that we will unveil on the 15th of September.
With this set, let's open for a Q&A, and as the operator said, it would be great if all of you who ask a question limit yourself to two questions so that we have an opportunity in the remaining 40 minutes for everybody to ask their questions.
This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. As a reminder, we kindly ask you to limit your questions to a maximum of two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Andrew Baker with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hey. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one, just on AXA XL Insurance pricing and loss cost trends. Are you able to just give an update on what you're currently seeing in your major product lines? I guess, if possible, for the deterioration that we saw in the second quarter vs the first quarter, are you able just to give us a sense of how much of this was related to the seasonal mix effects that you'd previously flagged vs true underlying pricing deterioration? Then secondly, apologies if this goes against the rules, and it could be more of a CMD topic. If I look at your Solvency ratio for 2027, obviously including the Solvency II review benefits, it looks to be around 240% or so, which feels very high, both on a standalone basis or vs history.
I guess, is the preference to bring this down over time? If so, what are your preferred levers to do so? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andrew, for your two questions. Let's handle the second one straight away. Again, we are in the middle of 2026 now, and we don't know yet for sure the benefits of the Solvency II revision. Assuming that you are right, which you most likely will be, yes, 240%, if that was the number, is a very high level, and as we said, we have no target for the Solvency. My personal view is always everything that is above 200% is very satisfactory, and you should be very pleased that the Solvency is very high. It shows the high robustness and high quality of our franchise. As we said, we want to build the next plan on a position of strength. When it comes to the first question, I'll let Scott go into more detail.
I think, as I said to you, I'm very pleased with the performance of AXA XL because Scott and his team have achieved stable margins in an environment that is not easy. We have to compare ourselves always against the market, AXA XL has managed to have a better pricing than the market. When I personally look at how to evaluate the performance of AXA XL, I don't look at the price increases or decreases. I look at the underlying earnings. What I'm very pleased to see, that in this difficult environment, AXA XL has managed to progress their underlying earnings in a great way. Scott, maybe if you can talk about this question of seasonal mix effects and the delta between Q2 and Q1.
Sure. An important area for us. Pricing was less than - 1%. There's a lot of products in there, a lot of mix, which is slightly below trend, but not much. Trend's only a couple of points there. We're very happy with the performance of the specialty business. Sort of the topic around property. We were - 7% for the first half. North America property, give you a little idea on mix, was - 10%. Give you a sense, our property business, we write very little of the coastal Nat Cat exposed property business that has been the topic of conversation over the last couple of weeks. You may remember when we took a lot of our Nat Cat exposure out of the portfolio a few years back. We have a little bit of that, but very little of that business along the coast.
We're more of a large account primary writer of that business. While rates are down, it continues to perform very well and still is an excellent line for us, because the price had gone up quite a bit in the last few years.
Thank you, Scott. We'll move on to the next question.
The next question comes from Fahad Changazi with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Could I ask what was the benefit to AXA XL's H1 2026 earnings from lower reinsurance costs? At Q1 2026, I believe we were expecting AXA XL's pricing to be stable to slightly negative, I appreciate it's not about the absolute level pricing, but is that still the expectation for full year 2026? Thank you.
Sorry, could you repeat your second question on the pricing because there was a little cut in the line, just to be sure that we are answering the right question.
Sure. At Q1 2026, I believe the expectation for AXA XL's pricing outlook was stable to slightly negative. Is that still the expectation for full year 2026?
Very good. I would suggest Scott is answering both question, one on the benefit of lower reinsurance cost and the second one on the pricing. Scott has commented line by line on the pricing experience, and maybe he can do the same when it comes to outlook. Scott?
Yes. Thank you, Thomas. The benefit for reinsurance in the first half was about 30 basis points. Obviously, a lot of those treaties are one, so it takes a while to work its way through the insurance portfolio, but it's approximately about 30 basis points. In terms of outlook, we have a very diverse product mix. For AXA XL, we sell 400 different insurance products across 26 different countries. There is no one market here. We look at each product and each geography. Generally speaking, we do expect the professional cyber, that kind of business to see improving pricing. We expect specialty. It's got a big mix in there. Anything related to geopolitical is obviously you're going to see higher pricing on. Casualty, we expect to maintain where we're at. The property business, we expect to be selective on opportunity there.
We think that the market in total you might say it's softening, but there is still plenty of opportunity for us in most of our lines of business.
Thank you, Scott. Let's move to the next question.
The next question comes from Farooq Hanif with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Thanks very much. I'd like to ask Alban actually about slide 35 and Prima and just some of the mechanics around modeling it. Thank you for the slide, by the way. As we move forward, is the way to do it to bring down the MGA? For example, if your premium recapture was 45%, we assume 55% MGA, and then slowly bring in the insurance earnings. If you could explain or maybe help us a little bit in guiding 2H and going forward about just the mechanics of modeling that would be very helpful as question one. Question two is in the P&C business, I note you talked about the higher investment income trend vs IFI. I was expecting a little bit more. It doesn't seem that material.
Are you still expecting that to widen in terms of investment income vs the IFI? Could you explain again some of the drivers behind this? Thank you.
Thank you, Farooq. I would suggest Alban is answering both questions on Prima and on the investment income.
In a stabilized moment, which will be in 2027, you will see that we would have recaptured probably 90% of the premiums generated by Prima. You have on screen, the current pro forma P&L of Prima from a technical basis. To give you a bit more about this, Prima grew by 30% its premiums in the first half, obviously you can't say that it's going to be 30% for each period, but that gives you the pace at which it grew for the first half. There is around EUR 2 billion of reserves currently at Prima, half being unearned premium reserve, half being claimed reserves. As we recapture the premiums, we'll progressively build the reserves and have the assets, and therefore the investment income on those assets. You see the combined ratio at 87.5%, which reflects the technical profitability of Prima.
That's in a stable state, in 2027. For the time being, as you know, Prima is for us still an MGA only, and that's why it had the impacts on the loss ratio and the expense ratio because obviously there's no loss and there is expenses in front of revenues. This year, probably we will have recaptured EUR 900 million of premiums at the end of the year. I hope with that you are able to model it properly. On investment income, we reinvested overall in P&C at a rate of 4.6% over the first half. Going forward, we will keep on reinvesting at that higher rate, we are still very confident that we can grow our investment income in P&C and clearly above the increasing cost of IFI.
Just quickly, one follow-up. Do we continue with the MGA earnings? In 2027, for example, if you had 90%, you still have 10% of MGA. Is that the right way to think about it?
We have 53% of the MGA, and we will have 100% of or 90% because in 2027 there's still a bit of leakage, of the premiums and reserves. You can assume 53% of the technical earnings and the investment income will be for us entirely.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you, Farooq. Let's go to the next question.
The next question comes from Andrew Crean with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning. A couple of questions. Firstly, you talk quite a lot about reserve prudence currently. Is there anything more figuratively? Can you quantify that, in any respect for us? Secondly, I noticed that the pricing in retail hardened a bit in the second quarter, both in terms of, I think, Germany and the U.K. Could you talk a bit about the outlook for retail pricing, and whether you see that as being ahead of severity and frequency?
Thank you, Andrew, for your questions. I suggest Alban will talk about the reserve prudence and some quantifications, then Guillaume Borie, who is with us, will talk about the retail pricing, in particular with focus on Germany and the U.K. Alban?
Thanks, Andrew, for your question. As usual, I fear I'll disappoint you a bit because we can't put a number exactly on the prudence, but you saw that the Nat Cat stood at 3.5% vs a normal cat load of 4.5%. As you know, we manage discount, Nat Cat, and PYDs all together, therefore, the 1% PYD is in the low end of our usual release, which means that the difference, so to speak, is additional reserve prudence.
Good morning, Andrew. On retail pricing, it has indeed slightly improved further out of already a very strong base in the second quarter. It does reflect the fact that we have been extremely disciplined with inflation management in the context of the aftermath of the Middle East crisis across the board, so in all geographies. That's particularly true in France and in our European markets. The important element there also is that while being extremely disciplined, again, anticipating any kind of deterioration of the inflation that at this stage we still don't see, we have been able to increase volume quite significantly also. Therefore, we see the retail P&C business as being a stronghold for us and on the verge of a very strong performance for this year.
Just two million net new contracts in the half year, which was more than all of 2025. That underpins that it's not only a good pricing but also a good volume trend. Let's move to the next question.
The next question comes from Michael Huttner with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Perfect, thank you. First of all, one observation, given that you're doing the Investor Day on the 15th of September, are you actually going on holiday beforehand? I don't know. Anyway, it's probably at your elbow. First one, mid-market. There's some numbers, but could you give us a load more numbers, expected return, actual return, any losses, any defaults, any migration? It's just to gain a little bit of comfort. It's no longer such a topic, but a bit of clarity. My second one is on cash. It's the only metric where there's no feeling that things are getting better. Obviously it's not a topic today, but you do indicate for the full year it's in line with your target, I think over the EUR 21 billion. You've done just under EUR 16 billion in the first two years.
To get to EUR 21 billion, it's only EUR 5 billion, it's less than EUR 7 billion run rate. Can you talk a little bit about what's happening there? Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. For your very first question on the holiday, we do take a holiday, absolutely, but it's still six weeks till the Investor Day, so we won't take a holiday of six weeks. A little holiday and then working for the Investor Day. Coming back to your questions, Alban will answer the topic around mid-market and potential defaults, and the second one around cash and the EUR 21 billion.
Hello, Michael. Thank you for your two questions. On the first one, on mid-market lending, there is little news really, because we have the same investment policy, the same selectivity in what we do with our asset managers. We have roughly EUR 10 billion of mid-market lending. The average line is EUR 7 million-EUR 8 million, and very importantly, we give instructions to our GPs on the industries in which we want to invest, in the covenants we want to have, and so on. One number that I think I mentioned last time, but which is, I think, useful, when our GPs comes to potential investments, our selection is such that we only take 15%-25% of the deals they come up with. So on top of their own selectivity, we add ours.
With this, we still see extremely good performance and no pickup in default rate in this portfolio at all. On cash, I am not completely sure I got your question, but if your question is will we be above the EUR 21 billion cash remittance target that we set at the beginning of the plan? Clearly, yes. When we sold AXA IM, we reaffirmed this target, even though obviously we are not getting the dividends from AXA IM. Yes, we will be above the EUR 21 billion.
Thank you, Alban. Let us move to the next question.
The next question comes from Will Hardcastle with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi there. On the personal lines in P&C, there's 3% volume growth. I guess can you help us to understand where any outliers were from a country basis in terms of material volume growth or any shrinkage? Does that pricing level here still suggest some margin accretion to come as this business earns through, recognizing that on a written basis, it sounds like you're going to hold the margin to take more volume. On U.K. pricing specifically, is there any distortion at all from mix or maybe premium, recognizing that's relatively small in the U.K., that shot that pricing up quarter-on-quarter? I think it looks like it's greater than 7% in Q2 discrete. Is this a pretty fair reflection of where the U.K. market is at the moment? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Will. On those two questions, I will handle them. On the first one, as we said, we are facing a very favorable P&C retail market for us because we have certainly tackled the necessary up-pricing of our portfolio at the time. Remember it was U.K. and Germany very early on and in one go, whereas many of the market players have decided to do it differently over quite a few years. This has also enabled us to do it fast and then be able to benefit from up-pricing of others. We still see this happening, so we will continue to benefit from it. This is more or less equal across the different markets, except maybe the U.K. I come to the U.K. in your second question.
Continental Europe is relatively homogeneous, so we'll continue this journey of holding margins or improving margins while gaining contracts. I mentioned earlier we gained 2 million net new contracts this half year, which is more than last year, and we want to continue that journey because, again, we don't have to face any re-underwriting. We can focus entirely on profitable growth. On your second question from the U.K., the U.K. is the first and only market so far that has started to soften slightly again, in particular in motor. As you know, our policy and philosophy is clearly we're not hunting for volume. We are hunting for profitability. When a market shows a certain weakness in one area, we are going to price up and make sure that the portfolio is in balance. That's what you clearly see in the U.K. We can move to the next question.
The next question comes from William Hawkins with KBW. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. As of the 1Q stage, I'm trying to get a better handle on how your admin expenses are driving non-life and life value chains. On slide 10, please, what was the actual admin expense ratio within the 24.9%? You've referred to the 40 basis point improvement, but I can't see the actual number. Now we're in the first half, could you also give a hint at what the claims handling expenses are in the attritional loss ratio, please? Secondly, again, I appreciate this is difficult, but I'm still really interested. In your walk for the CSM on slide 14, what do you think is the attributable admin expenses driving the new business value and the in-force return? I guess, again, I think you've said that they're a tailwind, but it's very hard to actually see how they're a tailwind.
If you could explain that a bit, that would be great. Thank you.
Thank you, William, for your almost three questions. Alban will answer them around the question of admin expenses, claims handling expenses, the slide 14 question around the CSM and admin expenses. Alban?
Thank you, Thomas. Hello, William. On the expense ratio at half year, the non-commission expenses stood at 9.7%, and they were at 9.9% in half year 2025. The claims handling costs, as you know, are included in the loss ratio, and therefore are not disclosed separately. On the CSM walk, I am thinking about the right way to think about it. I would say we have the same reduction in expense overall as you see in P&C. Overall, our non-commission expense, and you have the - 40 basis points on screen. We are accelerating very clearly as was planned in 2026 vs 2025. The expense ratio will probably come down this year by 30 basis points. That overall for the whole plan will be at - 50 basis points as was announced when we created that plan.
That - 30 basis points that we will have for all our non-commission expense within the group is probably evenly distributed between P&C, health, and life. You should take that into account when you want to model your CSM going forward.
Thank you very much, Alban and William. We move to the next question.
The next question comes from Iain Pearce with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one's just on the non-AXA XL commercial businesses. There seems to have been a couple of fairly sizable pricing moves Q2 on Q1, particularly in Spain and Asia, Africa, LATAM. Could you just talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing in those two markets in terms of pricing, but also just more generally in terms of mid-market and SME pricing and if you're seeing any decelerating trends there. The second one is just on the improvements in the short-term technical performance in the life and health segment and then the 130 basis point improvement in the combined ratio. Are you viewing that all as improvements from underwriting cost savings, internal efforts, or was there anything in terms of positive experience that you're seeing?
Just trying to see if we should be viewing that 96% combined ratio as a starting point for going forward.
Thank you, Iain, for your two questions. I suggest Alban is handling both of them.
Sorry, I hadn't taken my mic. I'll start with the second one. On this, in the health and protection business combined ratio, there's no prior year development. It's really the current year. It's the right basis to project on this. On the non-AXA XL commercial lines, you referred to EMEA and LATAM. We have seen some softening in Mexico, in particular, in terms of pricing. Otherwise, in Europe, I don't think we've seen some softening. It's more, I think, a question of mix because some countries like Switzerland and Germany have the vast majority of their business renewed at 1/1, whereas other countries, it's more along the year. Therefore, that's been certainly the reason for the change in pricing that you see between Q1 and Q2. Let's move to the next question.
Thank you.
The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
My lucky day. To health margin, you spoke a little bit about, and you've clearly overshot, but you said there's more coming, so I just wanted to get a feel. I think you had a target to improve the combined ratio in health, and it feels like you're already way above it. You did say you'd have more. Then the number of shares, so you're targeting 8% EPS growth. I'm trying to work backwards what it means in terms of earnings. I'm very lazy. What's the average number of shares for 2026, please? I know you'll probably say, "Well, you can work it out," but I'm always puzzled for when the buybacks happen. Thank you.
Michael, I thought you had another holiday question for us, you didn't. The number of shares, Alban will do that. On the health piece, we had a target around P&C. Remember, we wanted to improve our combined ratio over the plan period by 200 basis points. On health, we didn't have a target as such, but you should take it as a very good and positive surprise that the life and health combined ratio has improved by 310 basis points. Alban, on the shares.
On the number of shares, we are done with our share buybacks for the year. The number of shares between half year and full year should be stable at 2.023 billion.
Thank you, Alban and Michael.
Thank you very much.
One last question, and then we have to unfortunately close the call, but you will have plenty of opportunity on the 15th of September to ask more questions. Who wants to take the last question?
The last question comes from Ben Cohen with RBC. Please go ahead.
That's very kind. Thanks for taking my questions. I actually just wanted to ask in terms of the Middle East impact, what assumptions have you made in there in terms of that loss? Is there material risk going forward that that could worsen? Also on a related topic, just any color around the Nat Cat losses that you had in the first half, any sort of regional variability that was worth calling out? Thank you.
Alban, I think you can handle both questions there on the regional variability. I think it's important to point out France vs the rest of the world.
Absolutely. Hello, Ben, thank you for the two questions. On the first one, the Middle East impact of EUR 0.1 billion, that is an impact as of 30 June, therefore, there is no projection of potential future losses after June 30th. I would just say that obviously, given the reopening of the strait, our exposure in terms of vessels has come down materially because a number of ships have come out of the strait. By definition, it is a 30 June impact. I would say at this stage that probably 1/3 of it is a case reserve and 2/3 it is IBNR, simply for the reason as well that it is difficult to visit the sites for reasons that you can imagine.
On the Nat Cat loss, it is really driven by France and Southern Europe to some extent, in France in particular, we have had some hail storms in May. France in general has a higher cat load than the average of the group. They are at 5% vs 4.5% for the group average. For the first half, they were at 5.6%. That obviously does not take into account the recent wildfires for which we have no estimate at this stage.
Thank you, Alban.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all of you for having listened and for having asked your questions. We wish you a great summer, great holidays, as Michael was pointing out, and hope to see you all on the 15th of September when we are presenting our new plan. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Bye.