Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us at this press conference, during which Thomas Buberl, CEO, Frédéric de Courtois, Deputy CEO, and Alban de Mailly Nesle, CFO, will be presenting the half-year earnings for 2023 for AXA Group. After the presentation, they will be available to answer any questions. I'm going to hand the floor over to Mr. Thomas Buberl.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody, welcome to the presentation of the half-yearly results of AXA. The members of the Management Committee and myself are delighted to discuss with you today. If I take the first slide, the first half of 2023 was marked by a geopolitical and economic environment that remains uncertain. Despite this, AXA generated, once again, some sound results. They reflect the relevance of our strategic choices, the solidity of our business model, and also the commitment of our employees.
To begin, begin with, our premium, gross premium, written premiums rose by 2% to EUR 55.7 billion. This high-quality growth demonstrates the balance of our business mix and the sound performance of our business lines. I believe, I'm thinking in particular of the P&C lines and also in protection and in savings. The underlying earnings achieved the excellent level of EUR 4.1 billion. As you know, the IFRS 17 and 9 accounting standards have changed our reporting processes. This explains the various variations in the slides, in this and the following ones. Our operating results, our underlying results, I'm sorry, earnings, rose by 5% compared to the first half of 2022, under IFRS 4 and by 18% under IFRS 17. This reflects the very good technical profitability of our businesses and markets, in particular in France and Europe.
I will also come back to the excellent performance of AXA XL. The underlying earnings per share rose strongly by 8%. That, it's above our strategic plan objectives that included an increase of between 3% and 7% over the duration of the plan. Our Solvency II ratio achieved 235%, up 20 points compared to the end of 2022. This very sound level is well above our target of 190%. I will now go into detail about the very sound performance of our markets. Here, you can see on Slide 6, the how our markets have changed according to the IFRS 17 and four accounting standards. We generated in the first half, a very sound underlying performance, thanks to our key markets.
Under the new accounting standards in France, underlying results are up to EUR 1 billion, up by 20%. In Europe, the results earnings were over EUR 1.5 billion, an increase of 18%. In Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa, the earnings were at an increase of 8% at over EUR 800 million under IFRS 17. These levels of growth are very satisfactory. In our transversal markets, operating growth or underlying growth fell by 7% to EUR 0.2 billion, which reflects the difficult market conditions for asset management. I would especially like to highlight the excellent performance of AXA XL, up by 35%. We generated over EUR 900 million in the first half of the year, a result that's almost as much as what was done in France.
AXA XL is once again very well positioned to exceed its target of EUR 1.2 billion in underlying earnings this year. I would now like to turn to the sound position of our business model. AXA can use an extremely balanced model, with approximately 50% of our activity focusing on commercial lines and approximately 50 on retail. Let's begin with the companies. The P&C lines account for approximately 40% of our gross written premiums. Frédéric de Courtois will come back to this excellent performance in this business line, which was driven in particular by AXA XL and Europe. The pricing, the favorable pricing environment and our organic growth made it possible for us to obtain excellent technical results and earnings. Health and protection in commercial lines accounted for 10% of our activity.
This segment, which we would like to expand, addresses a strong corporate requirement for an employer, better access, and better health services. are major factors of interaction and loyalty development for talented staff. Now, moving on to retail. P&C business accounts for 25, 20% of our global premium income, and we were able to maintain our technical margins while ensuring significant client satisfaction. Finally, the rest of our activity can be found in life and health for in retail, where also in assets under management, this sound combination owes its quality to our solid distribution networks and our diversified offering in asset management, with in particular our alternative investment platform, the number one in Europe.
As you know, AXA is currently investing in, investing in our key markets, and we have also announced the completion of our acquisition of Grupo Asegurador de Crédito y Caución in Spain. This acquisition takes us from the 6th place to the 4th place on the Spanish market. Today, furthermore, we are announcing the acquisition of Laya Healthcare, which will make it possible for us to become one of the two largest players in the healthcare segment in Ireland. This acquisition is important for AXA. It allows us to diversify in a market where we are already well established in motor and are in the top position on this market. It is perfectly aligned with our strategy of targeted growth in healthcare, and today, Laya Healthcare has 600,000 clients and a 28% market share in Ireland.
We are very proud to be able to announce this acquisition today. We hope it will be implemented and effective by the end of the year, once we have received all regulatory approvals. This success is not just financial. We have also progressed in staff member satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Let's start off with our staff members, who are really, really the driving force of AXA through over 50 countries. First of all, I'd like to highlight our progress in terms of gender diversity and inclusion at AXA. These are issues that are particularly close to my heart. Today, more than 40% of our management teams are comprised, made up of women, and furthermore, our global inclusion indicator is at its highest level at 40 points.
Through our employee share ownership plan, we are proud to be able to involve our employees in the group's strategic decisions. For 30 years now, thanks to this plan, nearly 30% of our employees have been shareholders. In 2022, we recruited nearly 16,000 people and invested EUR 85 million in training our employees. This year, we also made official the implementation of our long-term Smart Working policy. Finally, we are developing a highly innovative global health and wellbeing policy that will benefit all our staff members starting in 2021. All these initiatives have ensured a very strong and very high level of commitment and satisfaction among our staff members. Today, our employee NPS, Net Promoter Scores, amounts to an excellent level of 37 points, up 2 points over 2022. Our clients are also at the heart of our transformation.
As you know, last year, AXA paid out nearly EUR 50 billion in compensation of customer claims and paid out EUR 5.9 billion in interest to our savings clients. To improve customer satisfaction, we have implemented action plans to enhance the client experience across our various experiences and distribution channels. We strive always to improve our offerings, our services, and certainly also our claims management. We measure our Net Promoter Score in 34 of our businesses and countries across the world. Six years ago, only half of our indicators were equal to or better than the market. Today, they all are. All our countries are equal to or better than the market. We are continuing our efforts in climate change with great determination.
Some weeks ago, we published new interim decarbonization targets for 2030 for our investment portfolios and also, for the first time, for our insurance portfolios. I will begin with our insurance targets, which are absolutely fundamental. Between now and 2013, we have set ourselves three major targets. Firstly, reduce the absolute emissions of our largest corporate clients by 30%. Secondly, reduce by 20% the carbon intensity of other clients. Thirdly, reduce the, by 20%, the carbon intensity of our personal motor portfolio. In parallel, between now and 2026, we are going to develop our offers and services dedicated to the ecological transition. I think in particular of developing renewable energy sources and green cloud options. Furthermore, we will continue our effort to reduce by 50% the carbon footprint of our General Account between 2019 and 2030.
We are also very well positioned to achieve our target of EUR 26 billion in green investments by the end of the year. We have already achieved EUR 25.1 billion in 2022. This year, we became the first European insurer to sign a Virtual Power Purchase Agreement. This contract, this agreement, commits us to buying electricity generated by a solar farm in Spain for 10 years, which equates to all the electricity consumed by our buildings and our data centers in Europe. As a responsible insurer, we participate to helping supply the electricity mix in Europe with renewable energy. To conclude my introduction, I'd like to come back to the key objectives of our strategic plan, which will be completed at the end of this year. Underlying earnings per share are up by 8%.
We are well on track to exceed our target of between 3%-7% over the entire life of the plan. Our Solvency II ratio amounted to 235%, well above our target of 190%. The return on equity amounted to 16.6%. Here, too, we are well positioned to exceed our target of between 13%-15% over the plan period. Finally, we are very confident that we will exceed our cash return objective of EUR 14 billion over the period of our strategic plan. Our excellent performance, reflected in these key indicators that I've just mentioned, is the result of the success of our transformation.
It was driven by our sound results of our businesses in all our markets, which means that we are now very confident that we will achieve our underlying earnings target in 2023. Our initial target, announced last May, was EUR 7.5 billion. I will now hand over to Frédéric de Courtois, who will go into more detail about these good results.
Thank you, Thomas. Hello, everyone. I will first comment on this performance by business lines, and we'll start with our main business line, which is P&C. You can see that gross written premiums in P&C grew strongly to by 7%. If I am to analyze it across the various segments, you can see that commercial lines, accounting for some two-thirds of our P&C insurance business, grew strongly by 9% for the 1st half. Which was driven by high demand from policyholders, as well as a general context of higher prices. Reinsurance, which is a smaller business for us, dropped by 3% revenue-wise. You will remember that we strongly reduced our cat net exposure and restructured our portfolio on reinsurance, all this on the back of increasing prices.
What we can note is that our lower exposures and lower gross written premiums have been largely offset by increasing prices to reach revenues which have been more or less stable. Last significant segment is the retail lines growing finely by some 5%. In this area, we focused on profitability, of course, with a higher pricing actions to offset inflation, which vary depending on the market in Europe, with good sales momentum, with net new money in the motor insurance, both in Europe and in France. Next slide, you can see that our technical margin, as measured by the combined ratio, reached a high level with a level of 90.9% of combined ratio. The method for calculating the combined ratio changed slightly with IFRS 17 being introduced.
The takeaway message with respect to the business operation in this respect is that there was very strong discipline on the technical margin and on cost control, which is the general trend, and also the level of nat cats was slightly below the typical normal trend and below that of last year. We have a nat cat business of 4% of annual premiums. We have a nat cat activity, which is in line with budget in the US, which is below for Europe, and we are ending the half year with a cat net expense of 4% of premiums, which is below anticipation, below expectations, and below budget. Last comment on this is that the severe losses reached quite a high level, a bit above what we expected.
Being stable, though, compared with last year, knowing that last year we included the very high loss due to the situation in Ukraine. Despite this strong loss due to Ukraine in the first half of 2023, the amount of large losses remained stable, high level of activity. The cost of the French riots were incorporated into the first half results, this basically gives you technical results of combined ratio of 90.9%. That's a very good level. Next page, next slide. This is the result of what I've just explained. P&C underlying earnings of EUR 2.7 billion, up significantly. You can see that the earnings depend on which standards we apply. We will be applying now IFRS 17 consistently.
What you need to understand is that the increase in earnings due to the technical results and due to the increase of the underwriting results with investment income slightly down or investment expenses slightly up, which is the amount of two contradictory aspects, higher reinvestment rates in the bond portfolio and lesser dividend payout from our private equity funds. Slight drop in investment results with underlying earnings up strongly by 54% in P&C. The second business is health and life. In the life and health business, the growth written premiums were down 1.1%, so almost stable year-over-year. To be noted is a good momentum of growth with the second quarter beating the first quarter for the first half.
Sales momentum, which has been sound with variable developments, good level of performance for protection, slightly slower business in unit-linked accounts due to volatile market. Very strong activity in General Account capital-light contracts, especially those with guaranteed maturity, like Euro-croissance in France, which is a reduced activity in line with our strategy for conventional General Account products. All in, In all, a stable activity level with a sound momentum, with the second quarter accelerating. In the health insurance, growth written premium down 6%. Remember, we told this to you in late last year, that we terminated two very major reinsurance contract for some EUR 2 billion in late last year, which weighs down on our revenues.
Except for this one-off item, the activity level in the health business shows growth written premiums up 6%, which is in sync with our goals. New business margin is stable, slightly up. Good business mix, good discipline with respect to the quality of business coming in. New money inflows minus outflows, slightly down, slightly in the negative territory, as you can see, with a strong drop in conventional General Account products, with activity level in protection and health being buoyant and with a stable in unit-linked and capital-light General Account products. Life business sound with accelerating trends in the second quarter.
All this gives you a lower earnings by 13% in life and health, with the main commentary explaining this being the difficulty in the health insurance business in the UK, with the National Health Service in the UK facing difficulty in meeting demands. leading to a strong increase in healthcare expenses and consumptions in the private health sector, which has had an impact on our claims, with an increased number and volumes of claims in the UK, which explains the technical results down EUR 137 million, which we are managing. We are recognizing the loss in the first half.
We will be gradually increasing prices to make up for this, knowing that in the medium term, the momentum will be positive because the UK clients will turn to the private sector. In the short term, it raises the number of claims. Financial results down, driven by what I said earlier, higher reinvestment rates in the bond portfolio and dividend payouts lower from funds. All these combining into a slight drop in the underlying earnings for the life and health business. In the last page, with respect to the asset management business, the takeaway message here is that this business has been resilient across the board. It has been adversely affected by volatile markets and the impacts on the markets and policy behavior.
Assets under management are almost stable. What's important to note is that the net inflows or the new money, which is close to breakeven, can be analyzed as very high activity with our third-party clients, both in the core business and the alternatives business. Conversely, offset by outflows from the General Accounts of AXA, which is connected with what I explained to you, that is the General Account, capital-hungry funds show a strong net outflows, plus a number of items like the dividend payouts and so on and so forth. All in all, the trading level, the business level, has been holding firm with our third-party clients and assets under management really being stable.
Underlying earnings are being slightly down, which is a result of what I explained, and which is the result of a number of investments we've been conducting to support business operations, which will yield positive results going forward. As a conclusion, this gives us very satisfactory level of activity, a strong discipline, and a strong increase in our P&C underlying earnings, which leads to the number which explained Thomas in his introductory remarks. Over to Alban.
Thank you, Frédéric. Good morning, everybody. In this slide, you can see a summary of our underlying earnings by business line, as Frédéric explained, which was up by 5%. When you add to this the effect of the share purchase, in the last few years, we are at plus 3%. We have growth of our underlying earnings per share of 8% in the first half of the year, which is, once again, demonstrates our ability to deliver earnings with regular growth, irrespective of the context. You can also see that the net earnings have contracted slightly by 7%. We went from IFRS 4 to IFRS 17, and under nine IFRS 17, gains from shares no longer go to the part of P&L, they go into own funds.
They're earning negotiable securities now, and by construction, they are less staggered over the year, and there will be, no doubt, more in the second half. Moving on to the next page that presents the trends in our solvency ratio, as there are several things to retain. The fact is, firstly, that we've achieved an extremely high level of solvency at 235%, which shows the robustness of our balance sheet. Secondly, is we should look at how did we achieve this result? Several factors. The first is that we create 20-35 points of solvency per year before dividend, and in this half year alone, we created 16 points. We are above, we in fact, slightly exceed the range that I've just mentioned.
Now, what's also interesting is that we achieved this growth without need, the need for more own funds or equity or shareholders' equity, so it's a slight increase organically. Second thing that should be noted in this graph is that markets had a positive impact of 4 points on our solvency. The final point in this graph is that we have further reduced our duration gap. What does that actually mean? It means that we are far less sensitive to movements in interest rates. You can see on the right-hand side, movement rates of 50 basis points have an impact of +5 or -7 point, was the double only two years ago. That's a significant event as well. Not only is our balance sheet robust, but we create a lot of solvency, and we have reduced our sensitivity to financial markets.
The conclusion we can draw in the following page, is as follows: We have a business model that ensures regular growth in our earnings, but with strong capital generation and a capital-light requirement. That can be seen in P&C and in health, where our capital requirements are quite limited. It can also be seen in life insurance, where we are progressing towards our objective to sell products that are capital-light. This makes it also possible for us to be confident in our ability, on the whole, to return cash via dividends from our various subsidiaries, which is one of our main objectives. A robust balance sheets, growth in solvency, and confidence in returning cash. I'm going to go back to Thomas for the conclusion.
Well, thank you, Alban. To conclude, I want to go back to our performance. You've seen, in an environment that remains difficult, the group can count on its resilience and its sound position. AXA achieved a very sound performance in the first half, which shows a sound implementation of the group's strategy, and also a very strong commitment by all our staff members. We have a satisfactory growth level. Our underlying earnings progress significantly, driven more specifically by our P&C business and strong technical profitability. I'd like to mention once again, the excellent performance of AXA XL. As Alban has just mentioned, the group has a very high, strong balance sheet with a solvency ratio of 235%, which is very much above our initial objective.
We are therefore very confident in our ability to exceed some of our objectives of our Driving Progress strategy plan for 2023, and achieving our underlying earnings target of + EUR 7.5 billion for 2023. All of these factors that I've just presented make us optimistic about the future. I thank you for your attention. We are now available to answer your questions.
We will start with the first question by axa.com.
From Milano Finanza. I would like to ask a few questions about Italy. What are the performance of your business in terms of life and P&C? What are you looking at forward with MPS? How to consider a possible charge, change of control? Could you do acquisitions in this country? Tua Assicurazioni is on the market, Generali wants to sell it as well. Thank you.
Thank you very much for that question. I suggest that Patrick Cohen, the CEO of Europe, who is with us on the call, respond to these questions. If I summarize again, you would like to know about our performance of Italy, both on life and P&C, the situation with MPS, and potential changes around there and potential acquisition targets. Patrick, if you could answer that question, please.
Thank you, Thomas, and thanks for the question. I will start with the performance on our business. I would say that we are very pleased with the momentum we're having in P&C. We have growth both in the retail business and in the commercial line business. That's been a steady growth over the years, and we're enhancing our capabilities there and continue to grow with good quality of the business we bring in. In terms of savings, it's a little bit tougher in this first half of the year.
I think it reflects what we're seeing in environment, which is obviously, given the volatility in the market, a slowdown on the unit-linked, and also in the context of higher interest rates, some competition coming from, from, from, from the govies. Importantly, the team is very mobilized to drive innovation, to continue to serve a very compelling proposition for customers and, and, and, and to restart with growth on that front. Coming to MPS, as you know, MPS is a long-term strategic partner for us. We have a very good relationship with the management.
We're in full support of the, the bank's strategic plan, working very closely with them, indeed, on innovating through our, our proposition, our products, at this stage, and continuing to serve customers, better, notably through our, through, through digital. We are really into this partner-to-partner spirit, and, and, and we'll focus to to gain momentum. As for the, the, the, the acquisition, potential acquisition, Italy is a, is a strategic market, for AXA. It's one where we have a, a strong presence, so we will, obviously continue to be vigilant on what comes in the market.
Thank you, Patrick. Let's go to the next question.
Yes, next question is from Daniel Guénot from Le Figaro. Daniel, please switch on your microphone and go ahead. Daniel, please switch on your microphone and go ahead.
Could you, Daniel, activate your mic and ask your question? You have the floor, sir.
All right. We'll switch to next question from Ronan McCaughey from Life Insurance International. Please, Ronan, switch on your microphone and go ahead.
Oh, yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. It's Ronan McCaughey from InsuranceERM publication, not Life Insurance International. I, I wanted to ask how challenging has it been for to implement IFRS 17 by AXA Group? Has it been a big, big challenge? You know, has it, has it really radically changed your results, and have you any further IFRS 17 work to do internally this year?
Well, thank you for, for your question. IFRS 17 has been a long project and needed some adaptation, mainly for our systems, and it was a lot of work for the finance family. It's a project that cost us EUR 200 million, to put things in perspective, over the years. When you look at the outcome, what we said since the beginning is that overall, IFRS 17 does not obviously affect our cash, our capital, because that's not accounting dependent. When you look at our earnings and our capital, there again, IFRS 17 didn't have a significant impact, and you saw that we were able to grow our earnings by 5% this year in IFRS 17 compared to last year under IFRS 4.
When you look at the detail by line of business, you have new components on the P&C side, and notably the, the discount and the insurance financial expenses. You have another way to present life earnings with the CSM. That adds complexity because it's new, and so everyone needs to understand the changes, which are accounting changes, and do not change the nature of the business nor its profitability.
If you allow me, Alban, I would add that we are proud to be the first big company to publish IFRS results. This is linked to strong team, unique accounting system worldwide. All of this led to this. This is not a race, of course, but this position of being the first to publish the IFRS results.
Shall we go to the next question?
La prochaine question-
The next question comes from Daniel Guénot from Le Figaro, which we'll be reading out. This is a question with respect to outflows from the life insurance books. He would like to know more about France, whether it's a worrying trend and how you can explain this.
Thank you very much, Daniel, for your question. We also have Guillaume Borie, who is the CEO of AXA France with us. I suggest that Guillaume Borie answers this question with respect to life insurance outflows and inflows for France. "Hello, everyone," says Guillaume Borie. "Thank you for your question. With respect to inflows into life insurance books in AXA France, we had a first half with two very different times. A tough time in the first quarter and a very good second quarter.
As Frédéric de Courtois mentioned earlier, we are facing trends which are similar to that in the group, with outflows from the Euro funds and positive inflows in the first half, with both unit-linked and with both Euro growth of funds, with a very strong success from the Euro growth of funds in the first half, up 80% in revenues and net new money, up EUR 1.3 billion in the Euro growth segment. All in all, our revenues in personal savings products have been stable year-on-year. The first quarter was -6.3, the second quarter, +7.5. An excellent month of June, up 14%.
All in all, new money is not an area of concern for AXA France." Thank you, Guillaume.
Moving on to the next question.
Is from Maximilian Volz from Versicherungswirtschaft. Please, Maximilian, switch on your microphone and go ahead.
Hello, can you hear me? Sorry, I have problems with the sound.
We can hear you.
Okay, sorry. 2 questions. First, do you plan to sell AXA Re? It's the first one. The second one is, how satisfied are you with the German half year score, and what do you expect in the rest of the year for Germany? Maybe a third question, is Germany a market for possible acquisitions? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Maximilian, for your question. I suggest that I take your first and third point, and Patrick Cohen will answer the second point around the German performance. Starting with the third one, Germany is clearly a market that we like a lot. We have a good position, and if there are potential possibilities to expand our footprint, we would certainly look at this, obviously, always making sure that the discipline on capital management is applied as we have done it so far. Second point, on AXA XL Re, you have seen in what Frédéric de Courtois was mentioning, that AXA XL Re is progressing very well.
We have certainly reduced significantly our exposure to natural catastrophes this year again by 35%, which has led to the fact that AXA XL Re is performing very well. A combined ratio of around 80% is something that we haven't seen for a long time. We are continuing our efforts to making AXA XL Re a attractive reinsurance business for our purposes. Patrick, if you could go to the second question on the satisfaction around the German results.
Well, I would say we are, we are very satisfied with the revenue momentum we're having in there. Along the lines of what has been described for AXA and for Europe in particular, on the on the P&C front, where we're seeing good good growth momentum there. Importantly, it has been highlighted by Frédéric, we are vigilant on the on the increase we're seeing in frequency post-COVID. I know the teams are having already implemented a series of technical measure to contain what, what appears to be a new setup post post-COVID in terms of a frequency level, which comes, which comes back to where we were pre-COVID.
Thank you, Patrick, and thank you, Maximilian, for your question. Let's go to the next one.
Next question is from Herbert Fromme, from Süddeutsche Zeitung. Please, Herbert, switch on your microphone and go ahead. Please, Herbert, can you switch on your microphone and go ahead?
Doesn't seem to work.
Okay, we're going to move on to Michael Stanczyk from WirtschaftsWoche. Please, Michael, can you switch on your microphone and go ahead?
Good morning together. I have a question to Mr. Buberl. He had an interview the last days with a Mexican newspaper. There he said that you understood in the last years that you can't control everything from Paris, that the local markets are very important for a company because, yeah, customers have different requirements. There need to be different products. I see that other big players, other big competitors are going a different way, and they try to. They go the path of standardization. They try to make products more comparable between the countries. What do you see, Mr. Buberl? What is the advantage of your strategy right now? The other question is about the strategic plan.
It ends in this year, the current plan. What is the next step for the next years? Can you answer that, please? Thank you.
Thank you for your two questions. Let's start with your last question on the strategic plan. It is true that the current one ends at the end of 2023, and the next step is to launch a new plan that starts in 2024. We will do that at the beginning of 2024. Since you have seen again today that our model delivers good and very sat-satisfactory results, our next strategic plan will certainly be circled around: How can we develop that model further? How can we grow this model further? Also, how can it become even more profitable? This will be the focus without revealing any details at this stage. More news to come in the first half of 2024.
On your newspaper article in the Mexican newspaper. Yes, AXA from the very beginning of its history had a very balanced model, which was that the group was clearly overseeing all of the local entities and was certainly focusing on core topics like the global brand, audit, risk and control, finances, but also the large investments. We are leaving the operational management of the local entity clearly to the local CEO and the local team, because we have seen over and over again that insurance is a local business. Customer needs and customer preferences are very local, and we would like to leave the maximum flexibility.
to our local teams, obviously, in the boundaries of the group, to work towards a high employee engagement and a high customer satisfaction. As I mentioned to you in my introductory part, this is something that we have achieved on all fronts. The employee satisfaction is at 37 points employee Net Promoter Score, which has never been that high. When you look at the customer satisfaction, we have to, we see the same. In all of our markets, we are in terms of customer satisfaction, at least at market average, and in most cases, above market average. We want to continue this journey because it has shown success. Shall we go to the next question?
Next question is from.
Question suivante de Herbert Fromme du Süddeutsche Zeitung. Herbert, vous pouvez allumer votre-
Yes, good morning. In, in English, my questions don't work, in French, they seem to work. There are 3 of them. 1, AXA XL. We hear from German industrial customers, some of them very big, an increasing frustration with the fact that many underwriting decisions from AXA XL are now no longer taken in, even in London, but in the United States. That there used to be a very close contact with underwriting on the, on the ground in Germany. That seems to have gone. My 2nd question would be, perhaps you answered that already. You mentioned that your Net Promoter Score was better than that of rivals. Perhaps you can share with us some of the actual figures. Insurers used to be in the negative territory in most NPS measures.
Can you give us NPS figures for the two or three major markets? My third question is, you are now 50, Mr. Buberl. You have been eight years with AXA at the helm there. What the rest of your life, will you continue with AXA? Will you move on? There are always rumors that you're in the running for this job and that job. What's your personal perspective? Will we, will we see you in two or three years at the same job?
Thank you, Herbert, for your question. I have to smile because the third question can only come from you. On the first topic around AXA XL, look, we have a very clear model at AXA XL, which follows exactly the same logic that I described earlier to your colleague, Michael. Which is that the core technical guidelines of AXA XL for all lines of business are clearly set by the Chief Underwriting Officer of AXA XL in the U.S. The application and the decision within the boundaries of these technical guidelines are done in the geographies for Germany. This would mean that this would be done in Dublin because the European headquarter of AXA XL is in Dublin.
This model has worked well over the last years, we obviously also take regular feedback of our customers and large customers at XL. So far, we have seen no sign in any geography that this would not be the case. NPS, obviously, we don't measure the NPS only by market, but by line of business in a market. I can't even give you 1 number of NPS for, for example, the German market, because you have 3 or 4 different ones. If you wanted to go more in detail, we should probably take this offline, clearly, we've got the market average in terms of NPS, plus our own number measured by a third party, and also the progression.
This is easy to show you how we've changed this. Then, on my personal question, yes, 50 years is certainly a big step in life. I realize, I have been at the helm of AXA now for almost seven years, at the beginning of September. It has been a fantastic journey with a fantastic team. If you saw me now, I'm still young, despite the fact that I'm 50. I'm still full of energy, and I have a lot of ideas together with my team for the next phase, which we are going to implement. Next question?
Next question is from Ronan McCaughey, from Life Insurance International. Ronan, please switch on your microphone and go ahead.
Hi, it's Ronan again. I'm not from Life Insurance International, from InsuranceERM publication in London. My question is about the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, which AXA, obviously, was really a founding partner of. What is the future, in your opinion, for the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance and for collective insurance action on Net Zero?
Thank you, Ronan, for your question. This chapter of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance is. I personally, I see it as a sad chapter because AXA was clearly at the origin of that Net-Zero Alliance, because insurance alliance, because it is important that both the asset owner and the insurance side work in tandem. We have used the time that we were together in the insurance, Net-Zero Insurance Alliance with our other fellow competitors in really understanding what is the right methodology of measuring emissions around insurance activities and insuring activities. Secondly, also, what could a target setting process and a target monitoring process look like? By the middle of this year, we have achieved this major milestone.
Unfortunately, this very good dynamic was disturbed, and we had to take the decision to exit the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, which doesn't mean at all that we have said goodbye to our ambitions around climate. As I mentioned in my introduction, right after the news of us not being part of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance anymore, we published for the first time, beyond the targets that we already have on the asset side, also, our targets on the insurance side.
As you saw, I even mentioned them in my introduction, because for me, this is one very important pillar of our engagement strategy, since an insurer, both as an investor but also as an insurer, can influence macro decisions and can influence also decisions of companies when it comes to the change in climate and the necessary actions. Maybe we take one last question since time has already progressed a lot.
We have no more questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. In this case, I want to thank you, for your question. Thank you for your attention and, wish those of you who haven't been on summer holiday yet, a great summer holiday and a good summer. Hope to see you soon. Thank you.