AXA Aktie

[Technical Difficulty]

Thank you, Anu, and good morning to all of you. Very happy to see you here today. And we are very glad, together with my team, that we can present to you the new strategic plan, which I believe will further strengthen our leadership in the insurance industry. Let me maybe start where we stand today. AXA has, after a long time now, become a pure insurance group with leading positions in markets where we operate and where we have a strong commitment to our customers. Our business today is deeply diversified across all lines of business, across all geographies, across all customer segments, and distribution channels. Over the last 10 years, we have built a very distinctive insurance franchise, and this plan is about taking it to the next level.

When we talk about the next level, we should have a look back. And if we talk about the last 10 years, we talk about a decade of reshaping AXA in which we have made deliberate choices to transform AXA, simplify our portfolio, and focus on the parts of the business where we believe we can create the most value. We have fundamentally shifted our portfolio towards insurance risk in P&C and Health, we strengthened underwriting discipline and pricing. And in the current plan, Unlock the Future, we have significantly improved our margins, and we are now best-in-class across all our markets. On the Life side, we have completely overhauled the in-force portfolio, reducing massively the exposure to high guarantees and refocusing the new business on capital-light business with attractive returns. And what for me is the most important, we have returned our franchise to growth across all lines of business.

At the same time, we have also worked on our customer proposition. We have sharpened it significantly in a way that we have simplified and digitalized our customer journeys. We've equipped our networks with better tools, and digital was always at the help of our physical channels and never at the expense. As a result of this, we now enjoy a market-leading Net Promoter Score in all of our key markets, which for me is a great indicator of loyalty, but also of future growth. We've also worked hard over the last 10 years to make the business future-ready from a technology perspective. I'm very pleased to tell you that the majority of our applications is now AI-ready and that we have also heavily invested in equipping our teams and also training our teams when it comes to AI tools.

This has helped us to drive efficiency across the organization. And I'm very pleased that 80% of our people, of our employees, tell us that they use AI regularly and that this regular use of AI presents a real advantage in their daily work. And this makes us very confident that we are now able to turn the technology into a practical advantage rather than an aspiration. So where do we stand today? AXA is a fundamentally different business today. It's an insurer and an insurer only with industry-leading underwriting expertise, a very clear customer focus, and a modern technology stack that is AI-ready. And this combination gives us a strong foundation for long-term success and also a great confidence to pursue to the next chapter of growth.

When we look over the past decade, we have not only talked about what we want to do or refined our strategy, we have also shown that we can execute it. We have set clear priorities at the beginning of each plan, and we have shown across the last two plans that we've been able to deliver in a culture of accountability and delivery. On top of this, we have also shown that we are doing this in a very disciplined capital allocation framework and a framework of great predictability. This also makes us very confident that for the remaining months of the current plan, Unlock the Future, we will be able to deliver at the upper end of the underlying earnings per share growth target and the return on equity target. So you see the track record of execution and the disciplined capital deployment is something that we will absolutely maintain and continue over to the next plan.

This has obviously also led to delivering industry-leading returns for our shareholders. 76% of our market cap has been returned to shareholders across the period of the last two plans. And this has been done through dividends and share buybacks, sharing the value we create with our investors. We are very confident that our strategy will continue to compound value for our shareholders and that this journey continues over to the next plan.

When we look at the combination that AXA presents today, it is, on the one hand, predictable earnings combined with balance sheet resilience. All of this, coupled with the fact that the environment that we are most likely to be facing will not be the same that we experienced over the last plan. However, we have built a business that is able to continue to deliver predictable and consistent performance.

Our confidence in this resilience reflects from our very diversified model. We have multiple earnings engines that are not tied to one single market or not tied to one economy or pricing cycle. We have a disciplined focus on margin, and we have a very active management of volatility. All of this, as I said earlier, is supported by a very strong balance sheet, a high-quality asset portfolio, and prudent reserves that we have further reinforced during this current plan. So, today, we have a business that has a proven ability to generate reliable and predictable earnings across very different environments and that is underpinned by a very robust and resilient balance sheet.

We are well positioned with a strong right to win. We are entering now a new plan with distinct competitive advantages. And one topic that we have probably not stressed enough in the past is the topic around our distribution. We have a distribution that is extremely well diversified. Whether customers choose to buy through agents, through brokers, to direct or other digital channels, we are present and we are able to capture the demand and underwrite their risk. We are not dependent on one single route to market.

Secondly, with the focus that we have achieved over the last 10 years, we are now in each market and in each line of business at scale, which also allows us to offer very competitive propositions. A third factor for me that is very important is that our insurance expertise and the depth of our insurance expertise is a real differentiator. We have an underwriting bench that probably not many others have to be able to price and underwrite a very wide range of risks at attractive margins.

All of this, and certainly in a time of big volatility and almost a crisis of confidence in many countries, the brand, the trust in the brand, and a strong brand are very important. And we are very happy that AXA has always been considered a very strong brand and that in a world in which risks are more present than ever, in which complexity is more present than ever, the insurer that customers trust will be the one that matters most in the decision of the customers. So, with this combination from distribution to brand, we've got the strong right to win in our markets also in the next chapter of our plan.

The next plan is called Growing Forward. Growing Forward has 2 notions: going forward, which is a continuity of our approach, but growing forward. And therefore, our next plan is first and foremost about growth, taking market share across all our businesses and leveraging our strong positions and our clear right to win that I was just talking about.

Growth will not come at the expense of margins. And I think that is a very important point to remember. We will continue in our efforts to grow to strengthen our technical capabilities, our tools, and processes so that every additional unit of growth is underwritten with the same rigor than it was beforehand. If we want to remain and stay competitive, we also need to accelerate efficiency, continuously simplifying processes and the way of working, which should ultimately drive us to lower unit cost. And obviously, one very powerful lever in all of this is artificial intelligence. And as I said earlier, we are going to deploy it at scale now after having trained and equipped ourselves in terms of data and applications.

And we are rolling it out across all pillars, automation, margins, and growth because we do believe that certainly on the customer front, sharpening the personalization of pricing and offers, equipping our sales teams and our underwriters with better insights and more data, and driving efficiency while enhancing customer experience and employee productivity are absolutely key levers for the next phase. And, so, all levers, growth, technical excellence, and efficiency, amplified by AI, will deepen our competitiveness and will give us the confidence that we can deliver stronger organic growth while maintaining robust margins that have underpinned so far and will underpin AXA's long-term value creation.

When we look ahead, the main tailwind for our industry is, are the large trends around us. Many sectors are complaining about a lack of growth. Insurance is in the fortunate position of not being part of this crowd. We are one of the rare sectors with structural growth drivers. Think about widening protection gaps. Think about new and more complex risks, think about aging populations with growing needs for retirement and health coverage, while public systems have difficulties to sustain.

At AXA, growth is and will not be concentrated on a single product or a single geography. It is broad-based across all our main segments: P&C, Health, Life & Savings, which is also one of the key strengths of our multiline model. AXA is especially well positioned to capitalize on this growth given its scale, its distribution diversification, and its depth in technical expertise. It is important to note that we start this new plan from a position of strength. All countries, all lines of business, everything is working well.

We have no turnaround case. And with excellent margins, we can now focus fully on capturing growth even more rather than spending time on turning around underperforming businesses. So, we operate as one of very, very few sectors in an industry with structural growth. We have the breadth and the capabilities to capture it across all our businesses, countries, and line of business. And we are entering in this phase now in a very strong position, ready to turn these advantages into sustained organic growth. But we are not just dependent on industry growth. That would not be enough. We have a clear plan to accelerate growth and to take market share across all our core segments. Let me go a little bit into detail by line of business.

In P&C, our first priority is to increase retention. There is still room to improve. And this is a growth engine that leverages our existing customer base. So every percent of growth we generate from our customer base, we know, we know these customers. We know we want to keep more of these customers that we already serve across retail, across SME, across mid-market, and also further strengthen at XL, the depth of the relationship we have with our strategic clients. So, better retention is a low-risk and high-quality source of growth. And obviously, when I was talking about AI earlier, AI will amplify a lot to work better than the traditional means on this question of retention. We will complement this focus on retention with very targeted expansion in some segments, capitalizing on the structural trends I was mentioning earlier.

And to give you two very concrete examples. One, direct. We are seeing now that the direct market is at an inflection point. There is more growth, and we are now ready to lean, certainly after the acquisition of Prima, to lean into the momentum and leverage our leading position. A second example is inclusive insurance. In France, for example, 20% of French people have difficulties to access to insurance solutions. We have decided not only in France, but across all the footprint in developed markets and developing markets to build a franchise of inclusive insurance that already contains more than 20 million customers because there is a growing demand for affordable solutions from more modest income customers in both, as I said, developed markets, but also in the emergence of a new middle class in the international markets.

And so this proven solution that has worked for 20 million customers will also be able to be scaled for more customers. At AXA XL, the situation is slightly different. We do see, as I said, structural growth opportunities. But given the fact that we see a pronounced cycle at AXA XL, our primary focus is disciplined cycle management in a market that is currently transitioning. Let me quickly also zoom on Life & Health. On Life & Health, we intend to build on the positive momentum by broadening distribution and by further improving our customer proposition when it comes to capital-light products. In Health and Protection, we will continue to drive our health specialization strategy because we are one of the largest health insurers outside of the U.S. with unique integrated offers and services, capturing growth in a segment where demand is rising, where margins are attractive, but where also customer needs go beyond paying claims, which is around "help me to organize my medical journey".

So, when you look across all the segments, we have a very clear and focused growth agenda, stronger retention, and targeted expansions across a few segments of our business. When we think about the next phase, we also need to then think about how are we going to achieve it. And as I said earlier, growth will not come at the expense of margins. Today, we have achieved a level of profitability. We are profitability leaders, which is also reflected in our disciplined capital allocation. The discipline that brought us here will also be the discipline that will guide us in the next plan. And this is fully embedded in how we steer and manage the day-to-day business and the further growth. As I said earlier, we are continuing to invest further in technical excellence, notably in pricing, in underwriting, claims, accelerating efficiency, but also accelerating our acumen when it comes to the appreciation of risk.

AI will be an absolute core component embedded in these processes and making sure that we can now move from what we have piloted and seen it works to rolling it out, to scaling it, to accelerating in order to deepen our competitiveness so that growth comes with attractive margins and with the same sustainable returns that we have seen it in this plan. So our ambition is clearly to grow market share, but we want to do it while we keep a clear focus on technical excellence and capital discipline. If we move to the next slide, I want to go a little bit deeper on AI because it's important that we understand clearly where it plays a role. We believe that at AXA, AI is a great opportunity for us and not something that is forced on to us or that we need to do to do it.

It is something that will fundamentally reshape the insurance model. And for those who can leverage it, AI, as you see on the slide, is really a positive flywheel because it helps in the beginning to acquire and to retain more effectively customers by offering greater personalization, by offering faster policy issuance, giving more accurate pricing and underwriting, being more efficient in claims settlement while improving service at every touch point. And so, AI is absolutely core for us, and we will implement AI across the whole value chain and not just in a few places where we think we can automate and save a few costs. AI is a competitive advantage, and AI compounds that advantage with more data because what we learn from our customers, not only through data, but through interaction gives us much more smartness and our models will become better.

We want to be the leader in AI. We have now the right foundations, large data sets, a technology stack that is more than 80% ready to go there. And certainly, and that's the most important thing, the teams that are hungry to implement it and use it in their daily work. And with the specific operating model that AXA has, combining the group's scale to build common AI and data capabilities, but at the same time, empower the local businesses to implement and to decide where it's best to deploy. This combination has been one of the success factors over the last plans and will be going forward with a very clear framework of accountability and responsibility. So we have already seen tangible value from AI, and this gives us the confidence that scaling it now across the entire business will further translate into a benefit around growth and margin.

So we have the foundations, we have the operating model to use AI and to further deepen our competitive advantage which will enable us to compound more growth while sustaining our margins. So it's always important to look at the beginning of the plan towards the end of the plan and say, look, when would we all be happy in 2029? What would success look like? And success would look threefold. One, if we grow and gain market share, we obviously and our shareholders will have a bigger business. But it will also be a better one because it will be even more diversified when you think about sources of earning and when you think about the balance between P&C, Health, and Life. Secondly, growth means also growing in terms of customers. And we want to achieve the barrier of 100 million customers, not only by growing the numbers, but also by growing the depth of the relationship.

And with AXA, our customers will get something very distinctive, which is a differentiated access to the best-of-breed asset managers for their savings and retirement needs and preferred access to high-quality needs and medical services because the personalization element in a customer journey has become so much more important and AI will help us to better use our assets. So implementing AI deeply across all the businesses will reshape our ways of working, but will also improve the ways of working and the way we are acting towards our customers. So 2029 will take AXA, will take our franchise to the next level. We will become a larger business with more customers, but also more depth. We'll have higher profits, and we will be more competitive while implementing AI and scaling AI across the entire business.

So, when we go to the next slide, the formula is relatively straightforward. We will leverage our strong starting point of this plan, which gives us the right to take market share while keeping attractive margins that we have very -- that we have worked hard to build using AI as an amplifier across the board. And this will underpin sustained growth in earnings, dividend and book value. So we are confident that our plan will translate into attractive and durable value creation for our shareholders and that we will continue the same execution discipline that we have done over the last plan and this plan.

If we move to the next slide, I want to say a word around the financial targets because the financial targets are very much aligned with this ambitious growth agenda. We are targeting for higher growth in underlying EPS and return on equity. And our underlying EPS growth target will, in the next plan, benefit less from share buybacks than in the last plan, while the underlying earnings ambition itself is increasing by 2 points versus the previous plan. We are now very happy with the cash remittance that we have. The level is good, and we intend to maintain it at that level while continuing to support a 75% payout, which is as it was over the last plan, composed of 60% in dividend and 15% in share buybacks.

But we are also introducing a new fourth target because if 75% is paid out, 25% remains invested and reinvested. And this book value per share that represents the retained earnings, including dividends, needs to also have a clear discipline, and we are putting up a new target, which is mid-teens growth in the book value per share. This metric captures the intrinsic value we have built over time through disciplined capital management and deployment. So, AXA is ready for the next chapter, a leading insurance franchise growing across all its segments, deepening its competitive texture to benefit, to the benefit both for its customers and its shareholders.

If we move to the next slide now, which I guess is the next section that will go, that Guillaume Borie will guide us through. It is the execution plan of the initiatives that I laid out, the key pillars of the plan with very concrete examples so that you can see again how we are moving from having piloted something successfully in one country in scaling it up across all of AXA. Thank you for your attendance.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for being with us today for the presentation of this plan. And so building on what Thomas just shared with all of us, I will now explain how we intend to execute this strategy and how concretely speaking, with all of our colleagues across the world, we will focus on a low-risk growth strategy that is not based on new market entries, but on leveraging the quality of the franchise we have today to bring it to the next level and to make sure that we capture broad-based growth out of the well-diversified model you see on this page. Our point there is to say that AXA is not meant to compound through the cycles, is meant to compound through the cycle, sorry, and not to bet on them.

So what we want to achieve is leveraging this diversification in order to compound growth and earnings above the level of the industry and for the long term. We will do that again, starting from a very strong position. We have all businesses firing on all cylinders. And as you can see here, for the 5 businesses of the group, we have delivered over the past plan, the current plan, the one we are going to close this year, a strong track record of both growth and margin improvement. The next level for us is now to leverage our best-in-class underwriting and operational excellence and accelerate growth. That's what you see here. We will keep improving technical excellence with clear targets that we present on this page, and we will keep improving efficiency.

And in both cases, it will be at the service of an accelerated organic growth. You see on this page the measurable outcomes we target to have over the course of the plan. And I want to insist on one element. Our top line target is meant to deliver 1 to 2 points above the industry market average. Thomas outlined the strong growth we see in our industry, and we believe that with the current model of AXA, we have the ability to outpace that by 1 to 2 points, and that's what we're going to do over the course of the next plan. How concretely by having a clear execution plan and making sure that we apply consistently this playbook across all of our businesses. Arguably, today, we have to address two big questions. First, P&C.

In P&C, we do see growth opportunities, leveraging our great customer base in retail and SME, while staying extremely disciplined at AXA XL, I will come back to that. Meanwhile, in Life & Health, there will be a stronger momentum, and we are fully ready to seize it. That will be the next engine of the growth for the group. We will accelerate now that we have a well-positioned de-risked, more profitable franchise, both in long-term Life and Health and in short-term Life and Health. We have a strong growth driver in this business, which is the demographic evolution across all of our markets and now AXA is well positioned to seize this opportunity. I will now go through those 2 segments, P&C first.

And on P&C, let's start by the elephant in the room, the P&C cycle. How do we look at it? I will start by AXA XL. Yes, there is a softening cycle at AXA XL. It's 1/3 of our P&C business. I want to insist on an element. What we usually call soft cycle is when, generally speaking, we are no longer able to price at the level of the claims cost. This is not the situation of AXA XL today. And that's why arguably with Scott and the XL teams, what we see today is what we call a softening market. Yes, prices are decelerating. But yes, in many cases, we still find very profitable business opportunities, growth opportunities, and we will be in this plan, extremely disciplined in the way we manage AXA XL in order to keep growing while being selective in capital allocation and first and foremost, protecting our margins. That's going to be the XL playbook. I will come back to it in a minute.

Meanwhile, 2/3 of our business, 2/3 of our business is retail and SME mid-market, mostly in Europe, in France, in Continental Europe, arguably the bread and butter of AXA. It plays to all of our strengths, great distribution networks, customer base that is already very large and where we have strong relationship and a great opportunity to expand, deepen the quality of those relationships as indicated by AXA. That's where we will grow first and foremost by more than 5% every year on those 2/3 of the business, 5% of growth on those 2/3 of the business, that's exactly what we have delivered in the first half of '26.

That's what we will keep delivering while accelerating through very clear initiatives because we have multiple levers to further accelerate this growth. And on those 2/3, I want to insist on a very significant element. Yes, even when you look at the price, the level of price increases currently, it's a bit lower than what we had in the past 2 years in the middle of the inflation crisis in Europe. But the reality is that it is still above claims cost and that we have a conducive pricing environment. And again, this pricing environment, we will beat it in terms of top line growth because we will have accelerated volume. How are we going to do that on retail and SME? First and foremost, we will activate much more the level of the retention.

When you look at our current performance, the reality is that in the current plan, as Thomas indicated, we focused a lot altogether on strengthening our margins. But now that we have margins at strong levels, we can focus on improving retention, and that's what we're going to do. On retention, we lag behind today. Only 30% of our entities have a better performance than our competitors in their respective markets. Any basis point of improvement of the retention will yield good growth for AXA, profitable growth out of a book that we know. So the playbook here is clear. The reality is that the growth of the next plan is already within our customer base. We know those customers.

And what we have to do is to invest in the quality of the pricing and offering, in the quality of claims and customer services, in the quality of customer value management. And to do that, AI will help us. That's what, for example, we are doing as we speak in France with a program called Ariane. And the French teams are reviewing systematically the customer journeys at the point of sale in order to make sure that for the distributor, when they have the customer in front of them, they know what to sell, how exactly they could cross-sell and how they could accelerate retention. It's yielding very concrete results, and that's a playbook that we will now expand to all of our entities in order to gain new customers and to improve the retention of the existing one that will lead to the growth of our customer portfolio.

We will apply the same playbook to our SME and mid-market book in Europe. This book of business is arguably the core of AXA, a very good book of customers, SMEs in most of the cases across Continental Europe, where we have a long-standing relationship and where our tied agent networks have very close intimacy with their customers. We want to bring it to the next level by better equipping our agents with new tools, including artificial intelligence, by enhancing our relationship with brokers, where in this segment, the name of the game is the quality of the underwriting tools we give to the brokers and by scaling our prevention and risk advisory services.

That's what we are doing, for example, in Italy, where we launched recently a new offer powered by artificial intelligence called Prevenzione that is helping the head of the SME to assess the risk of his company and then benefit from lower price points if they implement some tangible prevention measures in their company. We can scale that also to other markets. Ultimately, it will lead to better loss ratios, better retention, an increase of the retention by 60 bps over the plan. This retention playbook is going to be applied consistently across our entire retail and SME mid-market book. Beyond that, as Thomas indicated, we have some structural growth opportunities that we see in the market by some structural shifts of customer expectation and needs, and we believe we are very well positioned to benefit from those, where in direct, in inclusive insurance in the emerging markets.

Starting with direct. You see that Direct has experienced over the past few years in the markets where we do have direct operation, a faster growth than the average P&C market growth. There is stronger customer expectation for that kind of solution. We are today the largest player in Continental Europe in this business. It's a very profitable business, as you can see. And we have 2 amazing assets with the 2 leading direct brands in their respective countries, Direct Assurance in France and Prima in Italy. The reality is that we can leverage this expertise in order to further accelerate in the other 3 markets where we see a good opportunity, Ireland, Spain and Belgium, having a much more tailored pricing, improving the way we manage claims costs and even more fundamentally, very competitive products that are helping us capture this book of customers.

You see that we expect to grow out of this segment by more than 10% every year. So the growth of the direct business will be accretive to our global growth. And another element that we need to have in mind is that over the course of the next plan, we will recapture Prima premiums. Today, you don't see them. You will start seeing them in our GWP in the second half of this year for a small portion of it, most of it next year in '27 and a residual portion in '28. In aggregate, just recapturing the existing book of Prima will yield an additional point of reported growth to our metrics. So it will be supportive to the 5% target we give. Second significant growth opportunity is inclusive insurance. Thomas mentioned the affordability challenge. I don't come back to it.

The important point for us is to execute on this playbook by accelerating our effort to review our products and offers in order to make them more affordable for this customer segment and to make sure that we have the right distribution partners everywhere because in most of the cases, reaching the low to middle class consumers that have affordability issues goes through new type of distribution. That's why, for example, we have implemented dedicated partnerships in Spain, in France, in Mexico, and that will help us accelerate our growth. We expect to generate 8% every year out of this unit. There also, this 8% will be accretive to our global growth.

Last but not least, on the P&C side, to support our ambition to grow out of the retail and SME book, we will also accelerate in international markets. International market is today the dedicated unit for 17 countries in the emerging world, an accelerated growth, as you can see over the past 2 years. And we believe that we have concrete tangible actions to implement in order to increase our penetration in those markets. In those markets, the play is a lot about penetration acceleration rather than taking share from the competitors because you still have a lot of customers who basically do not have insurance at all. That's exactly what we will do with those markets.

And to do that, it's a lot about activating more distributors and making sure that they are as productive as possible. There also, we can use AI and technology to do so. For example, in Turkey, we launched a new tool for our distributor called Yaver GPT, which is helping them concretely speaking, driving their own productivity and increasing the number of policy per customer. So from a base that is already significant, this international market units, close to 10% of our P&C book, we intend to grow more than 15% every year being accretive to our global P&C growth. That's how we will grow more than 5% out of the 2/3 of our P&C book.

Moving now to XL in more details, and Scott is with us from the U.S. for the Q&A session later. I want first to underline the quality of the franchise and the extremely strong quality of the performance of AXA XL. The combined ratio is today below 90% with no PYD at all. Going forward, obviously, in terms of top line development, we will take a more cautious approach into what we call a softening, not soft commercial line market. Again, I want to insist, we still see some very good growth opportunities at AXA XL. Short term, we will be extremely focused on a disciplined cycle management. Our top priority there is to defend high margins.

The organization of Scott is ready for market cycle and everything is organized in order to choose where we can grow above capital hurdles and where we have to take a much more cautious approach. You have a good illustration of that on this page, on which I would like to spend a minute because we believe it's extremely important to share with you how we focus on margin through disciplined cycle management, which could be counterintuitive from time to time. Take in the first half of this year, property and casualty. Property price minus 7%. So strong deceleration, but we grew. We grew volumes. And in aggregate, our premium have increased by 3%. Why so? Because we still have an excellent profitability of this book.

In many cases, around 90% combined ratio. Margins are very attractive even with this level of prices. And we need to keep in mind that together with this minus 7%, we also had much more attractive reinsurance pricing and therefore, it's helping us protecting our margins. So, that's property. Yes, price effect is negative, but we still want to grow. At the opposite of that, casualty, pricing is positive, plus 5% in the first half of the year, but the reality is that we decreased our exposure. In aggregate, our premium have decreased by 5%. Why? Because the book is still profitable, but less than property, and we are extremely cautious in the management of our exposure to this book, in particular in the U.S.

So the playbook is to do exactly what I just shared with two examples, but across 26 countries and 400 products. So there is not a single cycle. There are 400 products, 26 countries, and we will apply there also technology and AI in order to help us better understand the profitability patterns of each and every book and adjust our underwriting triage accordingly. While we do that on the short term, again, to focus on underwriting discipline, we will also continue to prepare for the long term. And at AXA XL, even more than in other parts of our business, we see structural growth opportunities for the long term.

We believe we need to accelerate our diversification in the U.S. by going more towards mid-market and across the world by leveraging some structural changes we see in terms of customer needs, the expansion of companies, for example, in the defense sector, the energy transition, we are amongst the leading insurance companies on renewable energies and autonomous vehicle. Those are three examples where we play really to the AXA XL strength. How do we underwrite complex risk? How do we bring tailored solutions and how do we provide proper risk consulting expertise. That's why also recently, we decided to take control of S-RM, a risk advisory firm where we were a shareholder and where we are now 100% shareholder in order to bring it to the next level on risk consulting.

So, to conclude on XL, it's a great franchise, and we are very much confident in our ability to keep developing it at attractive margins, while managing the cycle, and therefore, we believe that there is room to grow earnings out of AXA XL going forward. That was the P&C playbook to grow. But I want to insist on an element that Thomas mentioned several times. As you know, AXA's DNA is one of underwriting and operational excellence. Yes, in this plan, we will go for accelerated growth and market share gains. But yes, in this plan, we will keep the same level of discipline on underwriting and operational excellence. We will never compromise on it to deliver the growth.

And yes, we believe that we have tangible operational levers to activate in order to keep strengthening our technical excellence. Technical excellence is a constant work, almost an hygiene work, as we say, within the company. And every morning, you need to ask yourself, how can you improve your pricing, your claims management policies, your underwriting quality. And the good news is that it's a lot about data. And now with AI, we can leverage data very differently in order to scale concrete solutions and deliver much better pricing, much better underwriting and much better claims management.

That's what we do, for example, with Photon, one of our AI tools that is a pricing engine that has helped us improve our loss ratio by 2 points in all the businesses where we have implemented it, mostly retail P&C so far and that progressively, we will scale to all of our businesses. Going beyond P&C and now moving to Life & Health. There, again, we see a structural acceleration opportunity, and we believe we can capitalize on this structural growth in order to turn our Life & Health book into an even stronger earnings growth engine for AXA in the next plan.

Why now? Because now we have repositioned the franchise by derisking our long-term portfolio and all the work we have done to clean the balance sheet and by restoring attractive margins in our short-term portfolio with very significant improvement of the margins over the past 3 years. So we believe now we are already to go after stronger volumes without compromising capital and technical discipline. On long-term Life & Health, I don't come back to the structural opportunity mentioned by Thomas, but we do have the assets to win in these markets, starting with our multi-specialist model and the very fact that on the retail customers, the strong retail customer base I was mentioning earlier and our effort of prevention will have tangible results in the growth of our long-term life book because we will sell more savings products to this customer base.

What do we need to do to leverage this? Activate distribution. And there, it's mostly a play around diversification, building stronger relationship with IFAs across the world. That's, for example, what we are doing more and more in Hong Kong, having more solid distribution partners. Recently, in Hong Kong, we initiated new partnerships with bank distribution across our high net worth business and also pursuing some greenfield opportunities, for example, distributing savings much more on the direct channel. That's what AXA France has started doing with tangible impact, as you can see, we believe we can replicate this playbook to accelerate our growth.

Another critical element to grow in the Life & Health business, as we know, is the competitiveness of the solutions we provide to our customers. There, to be extremely explicit, it's about the fees and loadings we have, and we did a lot of work in order to improve the competitiveness in order to reduce our loadings while keeping similar net margins for us. That's what we did, for example, in Switzerland with a new solution called SmartFlex. And over 3 years, we increased our market share in the individual savings market in Switzerland by 13% to 19%.

And it's a clear demonstration also of the benefit we expect to have from our new model on the investment solutions side with access to a scaled asset manager partner, BNP Paribas Asset Management, while also retaining an open architecture solution with access to third-party asset managers to secure every time the most attractive funds for our customer. All in all, this playbook, this expansion strategy will support sustained positive net flows across all of our long-term Life & Health books and therefore, reserves will increase. While doing that, we will remain extremely disciplined on the excellent level of margins we have today in the book that we expect to maintain at this level. Therefore, growing reserves, keeping stable margins. This will lead us to deliver strong CSM release annually.

Moving to the short-term business. Short-term business, mostly health, as you know, we did a very significant work over the past 3 years in order to improve both the value of the proposition we make to our customers in this market, both on the retail and on the employee benefit side, but also to improve our margins and go much closer to best-in-class players with today a combined ratio around 96%. We, therefore, believe that while continuing to benefit from sustained claims inflation on the health side that will drive price upwards, we can also have much better volumes out of this segment, and that out of a proposition that is quite unique in many of our markets, this verticalization, integrated health care proposal, we have ways to differentiate ourselves and therefore, have an accelerated growth around 6% to 7% every year.

While doing that there also, we will continue to focus on our monoline specialization strategy. For example, extending Photon, the pricing tool I was mentioning earlier, to the health business, but also by rolling out a new tool on claims life cycle management in order to better detect fraud, waste, and abuse and reduce leakage. Those tools, we intend to double the size of the business we cover with those technology tools, yielding very concrete results and therefore, improving our margin by 1 point in order to reach 95% combined ratio. So you see that's how across all the businesses, we intend to drive growth to accelerate market share gains while protecting our margins and staying at a very level of attractive -- a very good level of attractive margins.

To that extent, obviously, we will keep accelerating our efficiency efforts. Basically, over the course of the next plan, the pace of efficiency will almost double when compared to the current plan. In the current plan, we improved the expense ratio by 50 basis points. In the next plan, we expect to improve it by 90 basis points. How? By being extremely disciplined on cost management with 3 main levers that you see here, Alban will comment them in more detail in a second, but I'd like to spend 2 seconds on what is the most operational lever, which is how we will improve productivity across the whole organization, leveraging an accelerated plan for automation.

The reality of our workforce is that in many cases, due to natural attrition due to the demographics, we will have to face a sustained pace of replacement over the past, over the next years, sorry. To compensate for that, we believe that we need to accelerate productivity even further and that automation is giving us a great opportunity to do so. So, we will apply that extremely systematically. A good example of that is the work we are currently doing in our contact centers. For example, in Italy, where we deployed a new AI tool that is demonstrating a 10% increase in the speed of customer files treatment. So it's concrete tangible results that we can now have in all of our contact centers.

That's precisely leading me to say a word on AI and how concretely speaking, we will leverage AI in order to amplify the level of margin improvement and our level of organic growth throughout the plan. AI today doesn't sit in a lab within AXA. It's live, and it's already everywhere. That's the impact you see on this page, tangible business impact from AI initiatives and tools that are already used by our teams and our distributors across customer and distribution, across technical excellence, across efficiency. So AI is not experimental. It's a reality with business impact. The question for us is now to turn what is proven local solution with tangible impact that you see here into group-wide margin expansion and to use it to amplify our priorities, growth, technical excellence, efficiency.

I don't come back to the examples I mentioned earlier, but what you need to have in mind is that we expect to generate EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million of recurring value out of this AI initiative. How so? By leveraging our unique operating model, where we combine the strength of a global group, including to make sure that we manage the cost of implementation and the likely increase in BAU cost due to those new technologies, together with our local agility and making sure that on the ground, all of our teams, they fine-tune what we do around the reality of their respective business, they scale fast and they drive adoption because, again, the name of the game with AI will be about adoption by our teams, by our distributors and by our customers.

So that's the execution plan, and that's the road map we will apply consistently through the next 3 years in order to deliver the clear measurable outcomes you see on this page and around which the entire management team is committed. We believe that we have a clear plan to execute, a clear playbook and we will deliver on this, ultimately driving value creation that Alban will now comment. But as a short break before the part you prefer, we will have a short video to summarize how we use AI at the service of growth and customer acquisition and retention. Thank you all very much.

[Presentation]

Okay. So, good morning to all. Let me now take you to the financial details of our plan. The simple message is we are increasing all our targets. We are increasing our underlying earnings per share growth to 7% to 9%. We are increasing our ROE target to 15% to 17% and our cumulative cash remittance over the next plan to circa EUR 25 billion. And we are keeping the payout ratio policy that we have of 35% (sic) [ 75% ], made of 60% dividend and 15% share buyback. But we are also introducing a new objective of book value per share growth, inclusive of dividend per share that we position at mid-teen. And for us, that new objective, that new KPI reflects the value that we are creating by reinvesting the 25% that we are not paying to shareholder into high ROE business. So, those -- that set of targets demonstrates our ability to grow earnings, but also give visibility on dividend and share buyback and build the future through growing book value.

So investors get visible midterm EPS growth, an attractive cash yield and also compounding growth in book value. And all this with a resilient balance sheet and a resilient business. Before I go into the details, I want to spend 1 second on the last 2 plans, just to show again that we have met or exceeded all our financial targets over the plans, which shows our strong delivery capacity. We have, I think, an excellent track record, and we have built a very strong platform, very strong foundations to build on for our next plan. So let's start with underlying EPS growth. So, we aim at a 7% to 9% underlying earnings per share growth. That's made of 6% to 8% on underlying earnings and 1% from share buyback. So, it is an increase, a 2-point increase in reality in terms of underlying earnings growth compared to the current plan because the benefit of buyback will be lower because of a higher share price, and that's good.

But we are clearly increasing our ambition in terms of underlying earnings growth. And that ambition will be very balanced between P&C and Life & Health because we want both business lines to grow between 5% and 7% their earnings. I said we were increasing our objectives. I want to highlight the fact that we do that in a context which is probably less easy than 3 years ago, less easy because, as Guillaume mentioned, we have a softening cycle at XL, but less easy also because we have no business to turn around. All our businesses are performing. So there is no quick fix, no quick win. It is an improvement that we want to deliver in all our businesses. Let's start with P&C. As we showed, we have built now an extremely well-performing P&C platform throughout the group. So the purpose of the next plan is not to grow further our margins. The purpose of our next plan is to keep our margins stable and to grow our businesses.

They are already at scale. That's why the, we are delivering that economic performance. But we believe, as Thomas and Guillaume said, that we can grow them further. So the various levers that we'll have are revenues that will be, that will grow above 5% overall, a stable all year discounted combined ratio at 91% and investment income that will grow at 6% to 7%, simply because we will have a larger balance sheet, thanks to growth, but also because we will be replacing lower-yielding assets with higher-yielding assets, thanks to higher rates.

But the earnings driver in detail would not be uniform in the sense that for personal lines, SME, mid-market, we will have good top line growth, and we will carry on working on our margins. But for XL, the focus will be on profitability. We know how to manage the cycle. We have levers to manage the cycle, and I'm not coming back to what Guillaume has described, and there will be opportunities to grow the business at XL, but the focus will be on profitability, which means that we expect XL to show muted growth on top line while managing the deterioration of the current year combined ratio.

But there is room to grow XL's earnings and notably, thanks to higher investment income. For the whole group, we are confident that we can keep an all year combined ratio stable. First, because we will remain disciplined on our technical excellence and on our expense efficiency, but also because we have built reserve buffers over the last years, taking advantage of the low nat cat years that we had over the last 2 to 3 years. And those, that reserve prudence gives us a level of safety when it comes to the next plan's all year combined ratio. If I now move to Life & Health. So you know that we like presenting our Life & Health businesses in 2 blocks. One is the short term, which is annually repriceable renewable policies in protection and in health. And the other one is the long term and the translation of earnings for that long-term part, which is the savings business is through the CSM release.

On the short-term part, we believe we can grow our revenues 6% to 7%, thanks to higher demand, but thanks also to our competitiveness. And we can further improve the profitability. We reduced our combined ratio in short-term Life & Health by 300 bps over the current plan. We believe we can do another 100 bps in the next plan. And on the long-term business on the savings, we think we can grow our CSM release by 4 to 5 points. I'll come back to that in a second. And finally, the third lever to grow earnings in Life & Health will be investment income that we will grow at 4% to 5% at a lower pace than in P&C, simply because the duration of our assets is longer in that business than in P&C, and therefore, it takes more time to replace the lower-yielding assets. A word on the CSM release. If you take a simple approach, at the end of the day, the CSM release is a margin applied to an amount of reserves.

That margin, and you have it on screen, has been relatively stable, around 80, 85 bps over the last years, and we believe it will remain stable over the next years. But the reserves will grow. They will grow with the positive net cash flows that we are generating, and our ambition is to increase those net cash flows going forward. And they will also increase simply because of the credited rates that we give to our policyholders and the revaluation of unit-linked. All in all, reserves should grow 4% to 5%. So if you apply a stable margin to growing reserves at 4% to 5%, you have a CSM release that also grows at 4% to 5%. A word on expenses. Guillaume mentioned one lever. I will talk about two others in a minute. Overall, we will double the pace at which we improve our expense ratio. In this plan, our ambition is to decrease the expense ratio by 50 bps. We will do 90 bps in the next plan.

And it's a mix of good growth in our revenues, 5% or more and contained cost base because we don't want our costs to increase by more than 10%, 2%, sorry, a year. And just to make it very clear, our investments and notably our investments in technology will grow at the same pace as our revenues, so 5% or more. So the efforts will be on BAU expenses, not on investments. And through that cost containment and that strong growth, we will have positive jaws and therefore, a 90 bps improvement in our expense ratio. The two levers that Guillaume has not mentioned are, one the costs of our corporate center; and second, what we do on non-staff cost. Through the reorganization of our operating model with our entities through a simplification of our tasks here, we believe we can reduce the cost of corporate center by 15%. And on non-staff costs, when we compare ourselves to the best ones outside our industry, I'm thinking about carmakers or retailers, what they do on procurement is significantly more powerful than what we've been doing.

So we believe there's a lot to be done on non-staff costs, notably through procurement, and that will contribute 20 bps out of the 90 bps of expense ratio improvement that we are targeting. So that's about earnings. Now let's move to capital and cash. We are maintaining our target for normalized capital generation at 25 to 30 points. Even though we are increasing our top line target, that's because we have a very efficient model, very efficient operating model in terms of capital generation. There will probably be 7 points of additional capital requirements every year. Nevertheless, we maintain that 25 to 30 points target. On the cash side, we have reached over the current plan, a remittance ratio of 82%. And we believe that in the next plan, we can maintain that level of 80%, which is sustainable, and that will take us to circa EUR 25 billion of remittance from our entities to the group. So 80% will be remitted to us. 20% will be kept at local level for organic growth.

When we look at our capital model in general at group level, that translates into the same 75-25 that we've had over the current plan. 75% will be distributed to shareholders through dividends and buyback, 60 and 15 and 25. And 60 and 15 sorry, and we will keep 25% for our organic growth, which means that we have a clear hierarchy when it comes to capital and cash. First is organic growth. Second is dividend and share buyback. And third is M&A. So we have with this model, clearly, with the fact that we reinvest for future growth at a 15%, 15% to 17% ROE, the ability to deliver good cash now and also in the future. That's why we are introducing this new objective of book value per share growth, inclusive of dividend that we position at mid-teen versus 12% in the current plan because there again, we see an acceleration. And for us, that KPI will reflect the value we create now and in the future.

All this would have little value or less value if we didn't have a resilient business, a low volatility business and a resilient balance sheet. The first reason why our business is resilient is simply the diversification, diversification in terms of geographies, diversification in terms of lines of business. We have multiple earnings engines. We are not dependent on any geography, any single line of business, any single regulator, any single economic environment. That's a source of low volatility and of predictable earnings. But if we go into low volatility, I want to dwell for a second again on P&C. We have one of the best combined ratios of the industry. But, and it's probably less well known, we have also the least volatile one, and that's extremely important. We have regularity in what we deliver. So, that comes, obviously, from the diversification of our business. That comes from all the efforts we have made on our nat cat exposure in the past that allows us to be less exposed to that peril.

But we also demonstrated how we managed inflation 2 or 3 years ago when we had a peak in inflation, and that might prove useful in the coming months and years. And finally, as I said, we also built some prudence in our reserves. We've never been a company that releases excessive PYDs, but we have been extremely prudent over the last 3 years, taking advantage of our low nat cat losses. And as I said earlier, that will play as a safety net for our next plan. What is true for P&C is also true for Life & Health. We have a predictable, low volatility business there.

Again, if I take the same 2 businesses, short term and long term, on the short-term side, we have annually renewable, annually repriceable policies, and we have demonstrated that we can improve the earnings there even when we have headwinds in some of our markets. But it's also true on the long-term part on savings that is thanks to all the work that we've been doing on the runoff of some portfolios, the sales, cessions of some portfolios, the fact that we moved to capital light, the fact that we reduced our duration gap.

At the end of the day, you now have a business for which the CSM release is not very sensitive to say the least, to external financial shocks. So that's, again, a source of predictable earnings. On the balance sheet, what is true for the CSM is also true for our balance sheet. We have reduced significantly the sensitivities of our solvency to financial markets. And we also have a high level of solvency which will be further enhanced next year with the benefit of the Solvency II revision. So we have a robust balance sheet. And that's also true for our level of debt where we believe we have flexibility and we could increase our level of debt by EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion per year in the next plan. So overall, the balance sheet is strong, but that also shows in our assets. We've already always been prudent in our asset allocation. We will just in the next plan, take stock of the fact that rates, yields are higher.

And by definition, in that context, you are better off having debt than having real estate and private equity. So to some extent, we will rotate a part of our assets from those 2, real estate and private equity to private debt, below investment grade and investment grade. Still on our low volatility, here, you have what the sensitivity of our earnings overall would be to a minus 100 bps shock. So clearly, the world is not going in that direction these days. But if that were to happen, you see that it would have an impact of minus 4% on our earnings before management action, i.e., something which is very manageable. And you also see the impact on our solvency of some external shocks. So at the end of the day, the message is that we are very confident in our planned targets. They are built on realistic assumptions, notably when it comes to the softening market at XL. And our plan relies first and foremost, on our ability to execute, not on external factors.

And given the strength of our business, given the strength of our balance sheet, we have room to manage potential deviations. And we, therefore, believe we can deliver a predictable financial trajectory. So, in summary, we're confident that our plan will deliver good growth in the cash we deliver to the shareholders and good growth in the value that we generate year after year for the future as we reinvest at a higher ROE. We have a strong starting point, and we will build on this to deliver our plan. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Alban and Guillaume. And we now have roughly an hour to talk about and answer your questions. Who would like to start? Let's start here.

William Hawkins from KBW. Maybe I'll kick off just with one question, but it's got a few parts to it. Your new financial focus on book value growth, personally, I really like to see that, and I understand the discipline you're putting in place, but it does kind of lead to some questions about how it's going to affect your behavior in the future. So around that, it's going to be an impediment to any acquisitions of high multiple or fee kind of or distribution businesses in the future.

And we haven't really discussed much about M&A, but in the context of your solvency ratio, that must be a talking point. So I wonder, could that actually be a strategic impediment to how you think about growth over time? And then secondly, I know it's slightly nerdy, but your share buybacks are going to be dilutive to book value growth. So shouldn't you be thinking more creatively about how to repatriate capital rather than repeating the last plan? And then lastly, if you're going to focus on book value growth, why aren't you including CSM?

Thank you, Will, for your three questions. I'll take the first one, and Alban, if you could take the second and third around dilutive share buybacks and the book value question. So I think the question around M&A, for us, it's very important that we have this measure around book value to make sure that the means that remain within the company are well invested and well followed up and also follow a trajectory about the mid-teens that you have seen. And if you look in the past, this is absolutely achievable and has been achieved. For us, this plan relies very much on organic growth, Will, and this is the main focus. If we do spot M&A opportunities like we did in the past, when you think about Prima, when you think about Laya, when you think about Crédit Mutuel in Spain, we will certainly look at it, but it needs to fit into the concept of the book value development.

And so if we happen to find acquisition targets that have multiples that are a little bit higher, there needs to be synergies that justify it. So, and again, I want to stress what I said in my beginning, the discipline that we have put in place over many years now will remain in place. We have not fought for it for something very hard to give it up as of tomorrow. When it comes to margin discipline, when it comes to capital allocation discipline, we will remain the way we did before. Alban, on the second and third question that Will asked.

Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Will. On the share buyback that leads to a dilution, you're right mathematically. Now from a value standpoint, we still believe that our share price does not reflect our true value. And therefore, buying at this level of price is still accretive in terms of value for our shareholders. Then on your question on the CSM, I think the reason why we didn't include it, it's twofold. One, I think book value generally is better understood globally when you go to the U.S., Europe or Asia. And second, when you include CSM, it gets you to something close to the embedded value. And we obviously have a large life business, but we are a composite insurer. So I think it would draw the attention too much to the embedded value part versus the book value, which is more reflective of our total businesses.

Let's move from William to Will.

Will Hardcastle, UBS. The first one is thinking about the improving retention that's going through. It's sort of resonated and I've heard it from some others, and it seems to be a key part of the efficiency tools of AI. I guess as others are also doing it, does it create somewhat of a risk on the reduction in new business acquisition costs or your ability to grow the volume? And how are we trading that off, so, and I guess if that's getting more competitive, that could create a faster softening. So, I was just trying to understand how you're managing that? Or is it just that you think you're so far ahead of the competition and the competitive moat that they can't catch up? It's understanding that relationship.

And then where have you struck the yields? Obviously, yields have moved a long way quarter-to-date, year-to-date and understanding whether there's any risk. Years ago, if we took a step back, we'd always say that's linked with the P&C cycle. It takes time. But how much you're factoring that into any potential softening?

Good. I suggest I'll answer the first question. And Alban, if you could talk about the second question, also stressing in the second question or the answer of the second question that when we talk about cycle, we really only see the cycle today in the segment of large. When it comes to retail, when it comes to medium-sized business, we do not see the cycle, and that is also maybe linked to the answer on the first question. Retention is the best possible where you actually have, I would say, "control" over your customer, which is very much in agency markets.

And AXA has always been very good and very strong around developing the agent networks. We have probably one of the biggest agency networks in, and there, the question is, yes, others are also investing in AI, but the number of insurers that invest in AI, if you look at the portfolio of customers that it represents, is relatively small because in order to invest in AI, in order to benefit from it, you don't only need to have the financial means, but you also need to be able to entice your employees and the agents to do it.

And the big challenge in AI is not, have you got the best technology or have you bought the cheapest license for Copilot. The key is are you able to engage your employees and your agents to use it? And I think that's where the difference will be made. And therefore, when you look at the market, most likely, we will take market share from others and retain customers against smaller companies that have, don't have the means and don't have the ability to engage their customers and their agents and their employees in that. And because, and you said it in your sentence yourself, we are probably one of the first ones to push it, not retention as such because, I mean, when I was Head of Distribution in 2006, retention was only an issue, but to push it now with AI. And what we've seen in some areas that AI is really making a difference and does increase retention rates. And you've seen, I mean, Guillaume was talking about it earlier.

So on your question on yields and impact on pricing, so you can never say that no competitor will do some cash flow underwriting to take advantage of the yields. That being said, we don't believe it will be so, or it will be a major phenomenon for the simple reason that where you get a strong benefit is for long-term business and casualty and financial lines. I think we have strong support on pricing in casualty, notably in the U.S. with the loss trend. Today, pricing in casualty overall is up 4%. That's already below the loss trend, which is 6% to 8%. So I don't believe that we should see a further significant reduction in pricing in casualty for that reason. And if you think about other lines such as professional lines, which are also long tail, we are clearly seeing bottoming out of this after a softening part of the cycle for that line despite the higher yields. So I don't think we, that's a major risk.

Let's move to the next, Farooq.

Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan. Going back to your two growth pillars, which are new lines, particularly direct and then retention. If you had just one or not the other, so for example, if you just improve retention to the bps levels that you want to, what would that do to your growth rate? So when we look at your more than 5%, how much of this is really more about retention and how much is direct? Second question on the 91% combined ratio. So you alluded to reserve strength, but if I look at your nat cat budget as well, it feels to me, I may be wrong, but it feels to me like that is a higher confidence level. So your 4.5% is a more extreme event than it used to be given the amount of derisking you've done, for example, at XL Re. So could you comment on that? And within that 91%, are you saying loss ratio may go up and expense ratio goes down? Is that the mix? Or are you leaving it uncertain just because you want that flexibility?

And maybe one more question, if I may. So when you look at your Solvency II ratio, clearly, it's going to be a big number, but we know that Solvency II isn't the same as cash, and you talked about keeping capital locally. I'm kind of wondering why you're doing that. I mean you've always run a you're running a capital-light model. It seems like you have adequate capital in the group. I'm just kind of wondering why there hasn't been this desire to sort of turn some of that in-force into cash and maybe improve payout.

Thank you, Farooq, for your three questions. Guillaume, I suggest you do the first one when it is about retention versus direct. The answer is probably we have to do both. But I think you will get into retention more. And then if Alban, you could talk about the question of nat cat and also about the question around solvency. And I think, Farooq, you said a very important sentence. Solvency is not cash or not always cash. And I think that is something that we need to keep in mind. Yes, our solvency ratio will most likely be quite high. But because solvency also accounts for future profits, it's not cash.

So, on your first question, Farooq, obviously, when we look at growth, we are looking first at what we could call natural growth, meaning being exposed to the fastest-growing segments of our business. And that's exactly the point we make with direct, but also with inclusive insurance and international markets. Those are territories, customer segments where the natural growth is faster than the average growth of the market. By increasing our exposure to those segments, we will accelerate and it will be accretive to the global growth. So that's for this part.

And on this part, the play is a lot about new customer acquisition, for direct, for inclusive, for our international markets where we want to increase penetration. Retention is how indeed, we work better on our existing customer base, as Thomas indicated. And when we look at the value it will give us, that will be a very significant contributor to the increase of the volume effect in our largest geographies, in particular, in Continental Europe and in our French business unit. That's the way we look at it.

So on the combined ratio, when, the 4.5% cat load is determined with the help of Francoise. I'm looking here, our Chief Risk Officer, in the sense that we have a model that tells us on an average year, how much cat losses we should have. And it comes to 4.5%. We're very happy that over the last years, it was below. But as it is an average year, you will have years below and years above. So I prefer sticking to that 4.5%. If there is some prudence there, so much the better. When it comes to expense ratio and loss ratio, yes, you have well understood that our noncommission expense ratio will go down, with all the efforts that we, that I went through that I described earlier. But we will reinvest part of this and part of our technical excellence because there are still a lot to be done on technical excellence even in P&C in our competitiveness.

And in our competitiveness, that means potentially higher commissions ratios, and it could also mean a deterioration potentially of our loss ratio here or there. But overall, we will maintain our all year combined ratio. And then on turning in-force into cash. At the end of the day, we had a couple of transactions, as you know, where we sold some life reserves. It's not easy. There's not, there aren't so many buyers and the price they offer is not that great. And by doing this, you also compromise your ability to grow earnings on the Life side. So we're happy with the 75-25 or 80-20 when you look at local level because at the end of the day, we can generate 25 to 30 points of capital. And that's also due to the diversification we have between P&C and Life. And that diversification will probably be hindered if we were to sell our Life business or part of it.

Andrew?

It's Andrew Crean, for Autonomous. Three questions, if I can. Firstly, could you tell us what the interest rate and inflation assumption is behind your 3-year plan? You said, I think that 100 basis points of interest rates would hit the earnings by 4%. What would 100 basis points on the inflation assumption above your assumption do?

Secondly, the whole plan seems to be based on an assumption that large corporate will be softening, but all other P&C markets will be sort of stable and flat. That's beyond your control. If you get a soft large corporate market and that tips down into the mid-market and possibly into retail, is there a plan B? And would it be possible for you to hit your earnings targets under that scenario? And then thirdly, in the last plan, I think you said 6% to 8% and said that you do that in each of the 3 years. Is that something that is likely during this plan? Or do you think it may be less even delivery?

Thank you, Andrew, for your three questions. Alban, I suggest that you do the first one and the third one, and I'll quickly answer the second one. First of all, Andrew, what we see today is that the so-called softening, and I'm talking about softening and not soft market because what is important is that even in a softening market, profitability in most lines of business is still very good and growth makes sense, as you've seen beforehand. We do not see it in retail, and we do not see it in the commercial mid-market yet. What is the reason? On the retail side, we have precisely, as you mentioned earlier, still two things. One is inflation. So there is a reason and why an opportunity to increase prices. And secondly, you see that we do have many insurers that have not gone the same route that we have, meaning sorting out the issue in one go when you think about the beginning of last plan or this plan in the U.K., in Germany, where we went straight ahead and closed our gap immediately, whereas others did it over many years.

So on the retail side, I have big difficulties to see this softening market. And when you talk about the mid-market and the SME market, the question is there as well. Mostly softening comes with more capital and more competitors. And the SME market works like the retail market. You need to have a distribution presence and need to be in front of your customers. If you come into the market and have nothing, it's very difficult. It's very different to, let's say, a reinsurance market where you can come in with alternative capital very quickly. And the U.K. is probably one area where this could be more pronounced because you are much more in a broker market. But on the continent, a very large part is distributed by agents, and it's very difficult to get in there.

So on the assumptions we took, in terms of interest rates, we are not betting on higher interest rates nor for that matter, on low interest rates, it will be broadly stable. That's our assumption of the plan. And I believe the plan was done a couple of months ago. So recently, rates have gone up. They could come down as well, but broadly stable. When it comes to inflation, I think, and that's what I said on commenting on one of the slides, we, the assumption is that the inflation will remain between 2% and 3%. But at the end of the day, what matters is our ability to manage inflation. And that's what we demonstrated in 2022 when we had that spike in inflation, at the end of the day, it was not visible in our loss ratio because we know how to manage the claims. And we save on the claims, probably I'm thinking of the motor claims, 2 to 3 points every year compared to the natural claims inflation.

So we know how to get notably through procurement, better claims inflation than the general inflation would lead you to think. So I'm not concerned if we have an increase in inflation that it will impact our profitability. And on your second question, I do remember 3 years ago, you asked me whether 6% to 8% was every year. So I said, yes, I'm saying also that the 7% to 9% is every year.

Let's stay at the same tariff Fahad.

Regarding your asset reallocation from real estate into private debt, how much, what's the quantum we're talking about there? And how much of the 7% increase in capital requirements perhaps relates to this? And also on the CSM growth target of 4% to 5%, where you gave the breakdown of the CSM was. Could you give some color in terms of relative growth between your major, where you gave the breakdown of the CSM by country, could you give the relative growth of the countries for that 4% to 5% target? And I just wanted to ask you on health. We're talking a lot about retention. You've turned around the portfolio, you're going after more claims leakage. How has retention developed in health? And how is that going to go from here onwards?

Thank you for these questions. So I suggest, Alban, you take the first two. And on health, Patrick Cohen, CEO of Europe and also the CEO of Health will certainly answer and has got also the field experience from the U.K. on this. Alban and then Patrick afterwards.

So on the first one, we're talking about roughly 3% of our balance sheet that will move from real estate and private equity to private credit rate and notably below investment-grade private credit. The 7% increase in SCR is the capital required to grow the business. We don't believe that, that move from private equity and real estate to private credit will lead to a significant increase in required capital. And on the CSM, we are not giving specific guidance by country. But simply, you can see the two drivers, which are credited rates and net cash flows. We plan to have good net cash flows everywhere. And by definition, credited rates are lower in places where interest rates are lower, like Japan and Switzerland. But overall, the ambition is group-wide when it comes to growing our CSM release.

Patrick, on Health?

So thanks for your question. On Health, you said it. We've increased earnings 20% a year. We've very strongly improved the combined ratio. If I look at Europe, it's down 7 points, probably 4 points overall. So we have an extremely healthy portfolio, and we're coming back with growth now. We're at 7% growth. We see retention being stable. Obviously, all of that has been driven by our specialization effort and strategy, in particular, as you said, on price, claims and underwriting.

When it comes to retention, we believe we have a model, we have assets that are really distinctive. I'll mention three. First, our EB Workplace Solutions, where we help HR leaders through analytics to understand the root cause of absenteeism and their health population and direct their prevention business to the right places. We are betting very strongly in promoting prevention. Hassan is close to me here. For instance, in Colombia, 20% of our premium goes to prevention. And it has a fabulous effect on customer retention and also profitability. And last but not least, we are scaling our care delivery in some markets. So we're giving faster access. We're giving a great experience with a 30% claims cost reduction. We have now 84 centers, and we plan to grow that further in the coming years.

Thank you, Patrick. Fahad, did you have still, you were okay because you raised your hand again. Let's move here to the middle. I think it's Kailesh.

Kailesh Mistry, Bank of America. Two questions. Just coming back to the Life or Life & Health CSM point. I think you've been quite careful about phrasing it as CSM release in the various slides. You also gave us a margin on reserves. Obviously, most of our models are built on normalized CSM growth, et cetera. Does that imply that you're assuming a higher release rate throughout the plan? Because I think consensus is probably around 3.5% for normalized CSM growth. So that's the first one.

The second one is coming back to this topic around retention, et cetera. Obviously, it's an important driver of the plan in the developed markets. Can you talk a little bit about how much of the capabilities to affect that are already in place? And in particular, how you've adjusted incentives of distribution or management in order to drive that or if that's coming down the road?

I would suggest, Alban, you take the first question around the CSM release and Mathieu Godart, if you could take as the CEO of AXA France, take the second one because when we look at retention and cross-selling, I think AXA France today is probably the best practice example in the group. Alban?

So the simple answer to your question is that the pace at which we will increase the CSM release will be regular. So it's not going to increase. The 4% to 5% increase is something that we want to have every year. The, it's true that our normalized CSM growth is not at that level. But I want to emphasize the fact that they are not equivalent. Over the long term, obviously, they would converge. But over the long term, as Kailesh said. So the, I just want to take an example to illustrate that. When you look at our Japanese business with higher rates, the new business CSM of our Japanese business will come down simply because of the discount. Does it affect in any way the margins that we do in Japan that we release? No. So we need to keep that in mind.

Mathieu on retention and what is already in place?

Yes. Thank you very much for your question. So I think I will mention three things that are already in place. The first one is the tremendous work that we did regarding customer data. Today, we have developed and embedded in our systems a 360 vision of customers that is made available to our distribution networks, which gives them a fantastic lever to work on AI that is now implemented as well in the CRM. What does that mean concretely? It means that I will have the information on your situation, the events in life that might occur to you that will drive the behavior and next actions for distributors. And yes, you mentioned that we are going to work together with our networks to align the incentives and remuneration with the stake of retention?

Let's move here to the front. Ben?

Ben Cohen at RBC. Two questions, please. Firstly, in your prepared remarks about the book value growth, you flagged, I think, a headwind from the sort of the value of the Prima minority buyout. Could you just quantify sort of what that headwind can be maybe sort of lower and upper band in terms of how much that acts?

And secondly, in terms of reinsurance, I mean, no mention in terms of your own reinsurance business, and your expectations for, I guess, margins and growth there. But also if you could give us some sense in terms of your assumptions about your own reinsurance costs and how you see that changing over the plan? And are you looking at sort of more alternative capital to your remarks, Thomas, about capacity coming in there to reduce those costs?

Very good. So I suggest that, Alban, you take the question on Prima. And I guess the better Prima runs, the more difficult the buyout is. And then on the reinsurance side, we have Scott Gunter online. He can talk about our reinsurance business, so assumed reinsurance. And then Francoise, do you want to talk about as Chief Risk Officer around our reinsurance and the role of alternative capital? So Alban, Scott, Francoise?

So first, congratulations for spotting the that sentence that we added on Prima because the accounting is not absolutely obvious. But it's true that when we buy Prima, the 47% that we don't own yet in 2029, 2030, we will not book a goodwill. We will, it will come as a reduction in our net assets. That's why we flagged it in the press release. So, how much will it be? It will be for the increase in the value of those 47%. And that increase is both the reflection of the dediscounting because today, we have discounted that in our book and potentially the increase in value of Prima over the next years. We have not disclosed the price formula at which, that we would use to buy the minorities, but you can assume that it would be a multiple, which would not be far from the ones we have used for the acquisition of the 53%.

Scott, if you are with us on reinsurance and the expectations.

Yes. And on the assumed side, we have a very diversified portfolio. The folks in the room probably remember when we de-risked it on the cat side over the last few years. So it's diversified. And look, we're going to grow that selectively where the returns are attractive, but our real focus is on the adequacy of the pricing and getting the appropriate return for our efforts. This is also where we utilize a lot of the alternative capital ILS capabilities is mainly in the reinsurance portfolio, and that helps smooth it out a little bit in terms of the earnings.

Thank you, Scott. And Francoise, on the other side of the reinsurance.

On the reinsurance that we buy. So the short answer to your question is, yes, definitely, we look at all sorts of capital, which is available there, including alternative capital. So we look at that. And indeed, the availability of that capacity allows us to broaden the discussions that we have with the reinsurance market, not only on the price, but also on the conditions of reinsurance, notably also the clauses that we can negotiate, including also the collateral management, the attachment points, et cetera. So we look at it holistically.

Thank you, Francoise. Let's go to James.

It's James Shuck from Citi. Just wanted to ask firstly about retail P&C. When I, I mean, the over 5% GWP growth you've got, when I look at the slides, you've got direct growing at 10%, you've got the inclusive, which is probably a subset of that at 8%, and you've got international at kind of 15%. I'm left wondering about the agency side of things because over the last plan, I think you somewhat surprisingly decided to grow the agency network. The implication here is the agencies, I don't know, are going to be flat, but perhaps you could just talk to that on the retail P&C side.

Secondly, Alban, the 2% growth in the, let's call it, controllable cost base, I think you mentioned that you'd be expecting the investment part of that to grow broadly in line with revenues. So if you exceed on the revenue count, then I guess it's the BAU part of it. In order to be able to model that, I need to know what the mix is between the BAU and the investment part of that cost base, which would be helpful.

And then finally, just last question. I saw that you're flagging you got EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion of debt capacity per annum. I'm just wondering, I mean, over the plan period, if you issue no debt at all, then you'll be below what was your previous target range, which I imagine still stands. So why not in this plan allow for debt issuance because obviously, that's then funds available for, well, central remittances and cash and buybacks and things.

Very good. Guillaume, could you take James' question around retail P&C? And certainly, the agency, James, does play a big role. It goes back to the question I talked about earlier. We have been at the forefront of restructuring and turning around our agency P&C retail portfolio, which has allowed us this year and last year to grow in net new customers. And Guillaume will go into more detail. And I think, Alban, the two other questions are for you on the controllable expense base and the investments and the debt issuance capacity and are we using it or not? Guillaume?

Yes. So I think, Thomas, you mentioned most of the important elements indeed the retail P&C book is a bit more than EUR 20 billion of business. So if we want to deliver more than 5% every year, obviously, all the business areas will have to contribute. We expect to still have a conducive pricing environment in retail, as Thomas mentioned earlier, supported first and foremost by sustained claims inflation, even if it's at a lower level than what we have experienced in the current plan. That's the first element. And when you mention direct, so direct, it's more or less EUR 5 billion today, a bit more than that. Inclusive insurance, it's more or less EUR 2 billion.

So, you see we have to grow all the rest also very significantly. And that's exactly why we will invest in technology equipment for our distributors, first and foremost, our agent workforce. That's obviously proprietary distribution. So we know how to deploy technology fast that will improve their productivity, and it will help us improve both customer acquisition and customer retention through this channel. So they will have to contribute very significantly to the growth ambition, definitely.

And they want to contribute. So just a week ago, Mathieu, Patrick and I had a meeting with our Head of the agents in Europe, asking us, look, when are these licenses coming? When are we, so they really want to do it. And again, the one thing is the area which is the most important. If you push AI on people, nothing will happen. If they want it, it will happen. Alban?

So on investments and cost base, first, I want to draw your attention to the fact that we, when we say expenses, we include in that our claims handling costs, sorry, which was not the definition we used for the current plan. We are broadening the definition. And that's why it's a EUR 13 billion total. And the vast majority of that EUR 13 billion is BAU cost because to be on claims handling, there is not so much investment. We don't disclose the amount of investments we do. I'm sorry for that. But at the end of the day, what matters for us is that we will grow our cost base, those EUR 13 billion by 2%.

On the debt capacity, it's true. If we don't use that flexibility, we will reduce our gearing ratio, which is today at 21.7% at the end of the day, I don't think it would be a good use of our debt capacity to leverage the group purely to do additional buyback or additional dividend. I think buybacks and dividends should be grounded in our operating earnings and our debt should not be used for that. But we could use it for M&A exactly as we did in the current plan.

I think, James, one last comment again on this question around expenses because it has come in several areas. I think number one, the investments for us are absolutely crucial. And if they go with revenue great, even if they were not going 100% with revenue, we would not cut them back because they're absolutely crucial to transform our business. Secondly, and maybe that was not so clear so far, when we look at our expense ambition, it's much broader and higher than what was there previously. If you make the math, you will see that we are roughly twice at the ambition that we used to be in the future.

And when you also look into the details of the document, you will see that this is not just one area, it is for everybody. So the headquarter has had a very clear savings target. which has been started to be implemented as of last week. Every market unit has had a very clear target in terms of cost per policy, how can we bring the cost per policy down. So this element around how do we get more competitive and how do we make sure we are financing our growth of tomorrow by being even tougher on expenses is an absolute crucial element of this plan.

Will be reflected, therefore, in loss ratio. And when we talk about the loss ratio improvement, it will also reflect that cost containment of those costs.

Andrew, your arm is falling off.

Great. Andrew Baker, Goldman Sachs. First one, just on the, how do we think about AXA MPS JV? I think that's falling out next year. Is that contained in your sort of underlying earnings growth today? Or should we assume some type of anti-dilutive buyback? And then secondly, apologies, just returning back to the P&C top line, and I'm probably getting a little bit greedy here, but you mentioned the 1 to 2 points higher than the sector growth. I think if you adjust for the Prima recapture, it's more like in line to plus 1. You've been pretty clear around your retention efforts, direct, inclusive, international. Why shouldn't we expect it to be higher given the impact of the Prima recapture?

Thank you very much. I would suggest on MPS, we let Patrick talk. And I think what is, what we know today is that there is a lot of questions around MPS and that the end of the joint venture is October of next year. What we don't know at all, which solution will come. And therefore, I think your question, what will happen depending on the solution is a good one, but it's most likely a very premature one. But maybe, Patrick, you can talk about the state of MPS.

And on the second question, Andrew, when it comes to the growth on P&C, we spoke about direct. We spoke about the social inclusion. We have not spoken about the international markets yet because this is also one of the big growth drivers. I would ask Hassan afterwards to quickly give a flavor around the segment we have not covered yet on the P&C growth. Patrick?

Yes. So our agreement with MPS is in force until 2027. We are, of course, aware of the risiko bancario and the movements in the banking system in Italy. We -- very hard to see how this is going to play out. But certainly, we are going to discuss that agreement in the coming months. What is important for you to know is we are prepared for all options. We have very strongly increased our presence in Italy through the acquisition of Nobis and Prima. Prima continues to grow 30% this year. We are #2 in direct. We are now in the insurance retail motor in Italy, #1 in terms of new business policies.

So a very strong scale and a strong business there. If we look at the impact overall, the impact of discontinuation, potential discontinuation of the JV would be less than 2% of our earnings in Europe on the Life & Health business. And very importantly, if we would go into a discontinuation scenario, we would be entitled to a financial compensation to reflect the fair value of the JV. So that would be a wash for the group perspective.

But today, we don't know what the outcome will be. Yes, go ahead, Alban.

I just want to insist on one word that Patrick mentioned, which is the fair value. And you may have seen that in one of the prospectus released by BMPS, they clearly showed that the value would be not only the embedded value, but also the value of new business going forward. That's the fair value of the JV that Patrick had in mind.

Hassan?

Thank you, Thomas. Since Thomas decided to create international markets in 2023, we have grown earnings in euro terms by a CAGR of 16%. That tells you the double-digit growth and the additional growth that we're able to do outpacing the market growth in the markets where we operate in. We're very well diversified. We cover regions in Latin America, Africa, Turkey and Southeast Asia. We are in the major areas in those continents in a very focused manner. Again, after the focused strategy that was led by Thomas 10 years ago, we're now in very focused countries where we believe we have scale and we can really grow.

When you zoom in the P&C, 50% of our EUR 10 billion is P&C, roughly 30% commercial lines, 20% retail, both are growing at 15% per annum in terms of top line. So you can see very, very strong growth, as Guillaume mentioned in his slide earlier. Happy to zoom in on any specific questions on international markets further. Thank you.

Thank you, Hassan, and you will have the opportunity later on during the lunch to dive into more detail. Hadley?

Hadley Cohen, Morgan Stanley. First question is actually a corollary to Kailesh's question on retention. And apologies if I've missed this, but I remember a couple of years ago when one of your competitors was talking about retention being a key driver of volume growth in their plan, and I was talking to you about this, and you seem to suggest that it's just part and parcel of your day-to-day business to focus on retention. So just wondering if on the metrics that you're looking at improving retention over the next plan, can you give us the numbers for the improvement in retention that you've seen over the past few years, please?

And then second question, is around the health insurance business. Health insurance on the short-term side, it's a very regulated market globally, but you're clearly doing more to improve profitability there. I'm just wondering to what extent is there a sort of limit on how much profit regulators will sort of allow you to make in those lines of business and how close you are to that?

Thank you, Hadley. Let me try and answer both questions. And let me remind myself of when I was Head of Distribution. You know how retention worked and cross-selling worked in 2006. You got lists of your customers and your portfolio and you had like a chart, okay, how many customers were 3 policy, 2 policy, 1 policy. And most, all of the portfolios were more or less the same. You had roughly 53% of single policy customers. You then got people in agencies to phone these customers that have not been contacted for years and to try and sell them a policy.

This didn't work at all. The retention didn't, the retention and cross-selling numbers didn't move at all. How does it happen today? And Mathieu was trying to, was describing it. Today, you've got the agent who is driven by a tool in Mathieu's case, Salesforce. And what we know is if you do not sell a second or third policy within 12 months after the first policy, it's extremely difficult to do cross-selling and retention.

So what the tool does, it essentially works like Amazon, what is the next best offer. So when you conclude a contract immediately based on the data we have, on the social profile, on interactions we have had with the customers, you are being, or the agent is being proposed the next best offer and they need to go. Or they learn, for example, when somebody is coming, we said earlier, you can come through whatever access doesn't matter if it's direct or by telephone. If you do not go after a re inquiry within 12 hours afterwards, it's gone. AI is helping us a lot because in the past, again, we were working with Excel sheets and Excel lists. Today, this all comes automatically.

And as we stressed earlier, we have been working on two elements. One is refining our customer data. So it's much more precise now. And the other thing is the interaction data. So how did it work in the past in the call centers, if you had a bit of time because you were under your 2-minute call that you were allowed, you could ask the customer something and maybe you found out he or she has got a child. He or she has unfortunately had a death in the family.

Today, these interactions are all recorded, are all worked on, and you will immediately see whether something has happened or whether the system is spotting something. And you see cases in the, within AXA, where you see retention rates due to this going up 2%, 4%, 6%. And so that is exactly what we are focusing on. And with this new focus on retention will also be a new focus on tracking all of these numbers. I spoke earlier around discipline and execution. This new plan will also require a shift in the operational KPIs to go after retention in a very different manner. The second topic on health insurance. Yes, health insurance is a regulated market, but it's not so regulated. What is regulated today is many things. One, you have mostly countries where you have a public scheme and a private scheme. And what is regulated is who does what. And the difference between the different markets is always where is the boundary.

Secondly, what's regulated, sometimes, sometimes not, is the question of how do you treat a patient. So you have an appendix operation. In Germany, for example, it's exactly coded what it is, how you have to treat it and so on. In France, not so much. And so this is the difference across. However, when it comes to what do you do on pricing unless you go beyond what you should be doing, what you do, for example, on vertical integration. So what do you offer in terms of medical care? This is very much open to you. And when we think about where can we make the difference today is on a couple of things. Number one is how quickly are you to spotting trends. So going back to Andrew's question, inflation is not an issue. It becomes an issue when you don't react to it and when you don't react to it fast. Secondly, how many networks do we build in terms of our own medical care and how many customers can we convince and entice to go into our networks.

This is absolutely key for us. And then the third thing is also how do we leverage our medical networks beyond the basic care when you think about more intensive care and so on. On this topic, we are very free, and it's very much a question around discipline in doing it and disciplined implementation. Patrick will tell you the change of our health business in the U.K., yes, came with up pricing across the 3 different segments, corporate, SME and individual, but also came with an increase in steering of the cases. So when you have certain patterns from what was more in the area of 12%, 15% to the area of 80%, and that's where you are relatively free, and that's where you make the difference. Gian Luca, I think?

Gian Luca Ferrari, Mediobanca. I have a question around affordability. So you spoke about inclusive insurance, the fact that low earners are struggling a bit with inflation. But probably what is happening is also that if inflation keeps going, also the middle class will be in a certain way impacted. Then during the speech, you said, if we see additional inflation, we have room for increasing tariffs, so passing through to clients. Don't you think that we are getting very close to a moment in which people will scale down protections, we cut the nonmandatory coverages. So this kind of pass-through, it was probably doable over the past decade, but going forward, it is becoming less probable.

I agree that there is a point and what I would suggest as well is that I start with the answer and Patrick is continuing around affordability. So you don't, what you see today is three things. You see that some risks are more and more difficult to cover. Secondly, you see that there is a segment of a population, I mentioned earlier, 20% in France, who are basically excluded today. And what you also see is that people are not scaling down.

So, like in France, for example, we have a situation where in other countries where you could think, oh, people are being a bit more cautious. So they would look at their health insurance, they would look at their household insurance. No. It's a relatively constant good and not very sensitive to an economic environment.

And so our aim has always been on the first one to say, look, if a risk becomes difficult to insure as such, we need to integrate prevention in it because with prevention, you help the customer to manage the risk and bring the claims cost down and bring the tariff increase down. And secondly, to make sure that those people who are excluded will be able to get access to insurance through different products, social inclusion. Patrick, anything to add?

Yes. No. So I would say, first, that's important tied to your question. We know how to fight inflation on claims. We talked about this orientation, leveraging our Alpha Scale platform for spare parts driving cash settlement. All of this is in motion. And we will continue to work also on our cost. This has been mentioned. If I look at Europe, I mean, we reduced NC by 1 point, and we're going to continue. And AI really opens new frontier here. We're seeing it, 20%, 30% productivity. So that's going to help mitigate that inflation impact.

The second thing is we have built a dedicated range of proposition for those customers, looking at the essential covers and what really they need, so cater the product for the need of the customer to be as competitive as we can. And we're seeing, if I look at Europe, double-digit growth, we have now 3 million customers. Inclusive insurance is 20% of the growth of retail in Europe in the last 3 years. So this is here to stay. This segment is 25% of the population in any given market, and we're prepared to address their needs.

And maybe if I may, Mathieu, if you could quickly talk about the importance of prevention because in France, you have started to really integrate this in the areas where insurability is in question.

Yes. So does that work?

Yes, now it does.

Okay. So just, yes, prevention, we're working hard to include that as part of the, our product offering. Should it be, and I'm going away from inclusive insurance, but in cyber, but also as part of the retail market. And we are going to develop as well an app. I mean we are going to include as part of our app services to engage customers because engaging retail customers is probably the biggest challenge that we have to have an impact on prevention and therefore, ultimately on the premium price, which is something that we're going to be working on, especially on household in the coming plan. Maybe you want also to talk about the hail.

You can if you want to.

Yes, because I mean, this is something that is very pragmatic. We have been hit by hail storms in the past month. And this is something very pragmatic that we are pushing, which is to offer people to put their car in undercover parkings. And then we get the tickets and we take that. And it has an impact not only on the claims cost, but also on the quality of the relationship that we build with customers when it comes to prevention. So I wanted to mention this very pragmatic example. Thank you.

Thank you, Mathieu. And let's stay, I think, Iain.

Iain Pearce from BNP Paribas. The first one is just on the P&C revenue growth target, hopefully quite a simple one. So the 5% revenue growth target, I mean, if we're assuming XL is sort of flat or muted, the Retail and Commercial division needs to be probably growing at more like 7% or 8% to achieve that target. Now you've got greater than 5%. Are you comfortable with that being significantly greater than 5%, that sort of 7% or 8% is an achievable level?

And the second one is just on the combined ratio, again, just sort of thinking about the constituent parts. Really what I'm trying to get to is, do you plan for the attritional loss ratio, current year loss ratio to be moving up during this portion of the plan? And the third one is just around the direct insurance. Clearly, quite a big part of the growth agenda. Just trying to think how you think about what that might do in terms of lowering barriers to entry and new competitive threats? And also how your market shares compare in the direct channel versus the wider market in those particular countries you were targeting?

Good. I suggest I will take the first one on revenue growth. Alban, if you could take the second one on combined ratio and the loss ratio. And Patrick, if you could take the one on direct when it comes to particular Prima, and we see if Mathieu has something to add afterwards on Direct Assurance in France. So I think the revenue growth topic seems to be coming up quite a lot of times. And it is indeed like this. XL is the only place where we see a softening market, not a soft market, a softening market. However, where during the last phase of the turnaround and price increases, Scott and his team have done a great job in moving the pricing up quite highly. Therefore, when there is a bit of a decay on pricing, it still makes sense to write the business, as Guillaume explained earlier. We don't see any of these signals on the retail space, on the SME space. As I said earlier, retail and SME are very much agency driven in our place and the biggest bulk is agencies.

And when we talk about the growth levers we said, it's clearly retention. Retention is in our hands. It's -- these are our agents. This is our customer data. This is our AI application. And it's, if we want to succeed in retention and we don't succeed, we only have to blame ourselves. It's not the market. It's not dependent on any geopolitical situation. It's only dependent on us and how good are we in the implementation. And that's why, and the question comes up quite a lot, retention is the key lever in growth also in the SME because a butcher or hairdresser works like a private customer. And because we have the access to our agent, it is in our control and it is in our control to put the right sophistication with these agents to make sure retention increases. And again, we've done it over and over in AXA. It's nothing revolutionary in that sense. Alban?

So our commitment is on the all year combined ratio. And we're saying that thanks to everything we'll be doing on cost and technical excellence and the safety provided with reserve prudence, we're confident that we can maintain our all year combined ratio stable. Then from one entity to the other, obviously, the picture will be different. At XL, very clearly, the current year loss ratio will most probably deteriorate as our prices will be below loss trends. But as I said earlier, we absolutely believe that XL can grow earnings nonetheless.

In the other businesses, personal lines, SME, mid-market, here, it will be a mix of strong efforts still on technical excellence, strong efforts on expenses. But part of that will be reinvested in commissions and potentially in loss ratio as we are more competitive. So the situation will vary from one country to another. And at the end of the day, as I said, our commitment is on the group's whole year discounted combined ratio.

Patrick and Mathieu on direct?

Yes. So on direct, direct now is 20% of the retail business in Europe. It's growing fast. This is a trend that's here to stay. We start from a very strong base, right? Obviously, there is Prima where we're a leader, but we also have a leadership position. We're leader overall in Europe. We have leadership position in Belgium, in Ireland, in Spain. We believe through the acquisition of Direct, we're bringing unique capabilities that are very hard to replicate. When I look at how Prima manage pricing sophistication, the technology platform they have built, the number of variables they use, the time to get in production and get real-time feedback from claims, this is really cutting edge.

When I look at their customer experience, to give you two examples, now they're upfront in using voice AI on their call centers. You can quote a policy on WhatsApp in a conversational mode. All of those things are very, very hard to replicate. And the very good news for us, we're going to tap into this and work with our teams to expand this and make all of their businesses direct in the whole group of AXA stronger.

Mathieu, thank you, Patrick.

Yes. And in France, Direct Assurance is clearly the #1 in direct, 55% market share of a market which is approximately 4%. When you look at the P&C market in France, it's only 4%. So the potential is huge, and it's building its success on technical excellence, should it be on pricing or claims management, but also on the very good value for money that customers get from the experience. We mentioned inclusive insurance, but I think this is something that is clearly relevant for our customers today.

And another lever for the, for driving growth in the next plan is the diversification because Direct Assurance is entering in the health business, individual health, but will also enter the loan insurance business progressively. So a very strong brand, very good quality for service and very good growth prospects.

I would, I see your question. I would suggest the following. Time is moving on. For those of you in the room who are staying for lunch, we are still here. We can answer all your questions afterwards. I suggest we take one more question from the web. And I think Michael Huttner has had one who is not here today, surprisingly.

So Michael has several, and I'm going to ask one of them today. And Michael, I hope you get to follow up when you come and see us on the 21st. But his question is whether our targets in short-term Life and Health are ambitious enough. So we delivered high single-digit growth and improvement in margin in the last plan or the current plan. So he questions whether the 6% to 7% growth and 1 point of combined ratio is ambitious and whether we can actually grow faster without compromising on margins.

So I'll give this question to Guillaume because every market head would say the questions are too ambitious and Alban would say they're not ambitious enough. So Guillaume, you play the Swiss citizen.

I think it's appropriately ambitious. No. So, more seriously, the way we see it precisely is that in a market where there is a very significant claims inflation, we need to stay very disciplined in the way we steer the growth. So, again, we will accelerate growth also on this business. If you look at the current plan, we had a lot of work to deliver in order to improve the margins. We improved them by more than 300 basis points over 2 years. And we had, it was a deliberate choice to do that at the expense of volume growth. Volume growth in this segment has been negative in the current plan.

So, what we will do in the next plan is keep improving the margins by 1 point. It will be both an effort on expense and on technical excellence. We believe that this effort will even be a bit higher than this improvement of 100 basis points, but we will reinvest a part of the gains into competitivity in order to grow volumes at a faster level than what we have been able to achieve in the current plan. So we think it's both ambitious and disciplined, and this is the right avenue for this business for the next 3 years.

Excellent. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you very much for having asked all your questions. We are now moving on to the lunch, which will be behind us. And whoever still has got questions, we are staying here. We can try and answer all your questions. And certainly, next week in London, there is another important conference. If there is questions coming between now and next week, we have ample opportunities, and you will have ample opportunities to ask all your questions and get more clarity on our plan. Thank you very much for being here, and enjoy lunch.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us, this press conference concerning the AXA strategic plan for the period between 2027 and 2029. At this press conference, Thomas Buberl, who is CEO of the group; Guillaume Borie, who is Global Head of Finance Strategy Underwriting Risk and Technology in the group and Alban de Mailly, who is the CFO, will present the major strategic orientations for that period. And afterwards, of course, they will answer your questions. There would be other members of the Management Committee present as well.

I'll give the floor straightaway to Thomas Buberl.

Thank you, Ziad. Good morning, everybody. I'm very happy to meet with you all again in this nice Atrium here in our Head Office, [indiscernible] Paris. Welcome to this press conference, which is dedicated to the presentation of our new strategic plan for 2027 up to 2029. And it will be called Growing Forward.

As Ziad has just said, I present to you the main pillars of our new plan in just a short while. And then I'll leave the floor to Guillaume Borie, who is Global Head of Finance, Strategy Underwriting Risk and Technology in the group, and also Alban de Mailly, who is our group CFO. And they will present the details of the strategy and the financials, of course, as well the financial details connected with the new strategy. Of course, we'll be available afterwards to take your questions.

Now this plan is coming in at a time, which is important, a pivotal time for AXA because for the last 10 years, we've been pursuing a decisive transformation in AXA. In 2016, we started to simplify to streamline the group and to focus ourselves on our main business line, which is Insurance. And now we have given a new thought to the products and services we offer our clients always to come up with a better product offering in line with their needs. That's been done. And we also have a multichannel distribution network that we've set up. That's particularly dynamic and diversified.

In AXA, you can -- with AXA, you can access our products and services wherever you are, in any way you like. And that feeds into our customer satisfaction, look at the NPS here on the screen, the Net Promoter Score which were displaying here on the screen. It's now at 100%, was at 100% in the first half of 2026. We also modernized and this is important if we want to progress going forward, we modernized the technological foundation of AXA. We've invested heavily in AI but also in AI-readiness for our applications so that they're able to deal with AI.

And the majority of our people, our employees, 80% or so have already adopted AI in their day-to-day work. And they're happy to do that because they see that it is a lot of assistance, it enables them to work better and focus more on our clients. So we're now ready to move into top gear on that.

After 10 years of transformation, AXA is now more agile, more nimble with a business model that is more balanced and more robust. Our portfolio is diversified in terms of our markets, our business lines, our distribution channels, and it's totally aligned with our strategic priorities. We are now exactly where we wanted to be. And I'd like to also address some thanks my sincere thanks to our people, our employees. Thank you for your engagement and of course, our partners as well because it's all of you who have achieved this, who have actually enabled us to make these ambitious choices and succeed.

So we're nearing the end of our current plan, Unlock The Future, as is called. And you've seen that the main successes in that time period are the following. Firstly, we have demonstrated our ability to generate organic growth, which is dynamic and regular with products that are even more in line with our customers' needs. Secondly, we have a quality of execution of our priorities, combined with technical expertise has been bolstered in pricing and underwriting. And that enabled us to achieve a level of profitability, which is among the best-in-class in our industry. And these choices, it's not just words, these choices are reflected also in concrete terms in our earnings in our results.

There is the driving progress plan, which came before Unlock The Future and also the current plan Unlock The Future in respect of those plans, we have regularly delivered our objectives. And as we said when we reported our half yearly earnings, we are well on track towards achieving the upper part of the bracket that we set down in our guidance and our objectives, and that all of our different business lines. So we are ready to pursue this dynamic in our new strategic plan.

Now a very important topic is the AXA stock price. As you can see on this slide, it is -- has been outperforming for the last 5 years. The major indices like your stock [indiscernible] And Stocks Insurance. This development reflects the regularity of our earnings and the predictability of our performance. Also, it is the patent evidence that we were able to be resilient given the unstable economic and political environments we were living in the last few years, thanks to our business model, which is very balanced and diversified. And for me, these are major assets for AXA.

And when we talk to our shareholders, they say the same. So to understand the guidelines of our new strategic plan, I'd like to speak a little bit about the major megatrends that will continue to mark our industry. Firstly, we are addressing the protection gap a lot these days. The protection gap is the greater need for protection combined with the need to innovate in our products and services, so as to respond to that demand for protection. And as I said, it's a growing demand. Then we have demographic changes, creating more demand for health cover, for savings and of course, we've got to come up with responses to those needs. Then finally, there are great transformations underway in our societies. And that's bringing forth new risks that have to be insured. We keep on hearing about AI as being an opportunity, but it's also a risk.

And the link with the technological breakthroughs like AI is there. But, you remember this summer time, look at climate change and its effects. Once again, it was very much with us last summer time. So that creates a huge amount of demand for insurance solutions and prevention solutions. Also, AI will be shaking up our industry quite a lot. Our products will be subscribed to or underwritten differently with the help of technology. And also, we'll be distributing our products differently. And all of these trends, we can see them in all of our different markets in our different designs in all of our business lines to avail of that momentum to tap into it we've got to meet those needs.

In the next phase, we've got to be underpinned by our strengths. Now what are our strengths. Our distribution network. First start, as I was saying earlier, our distribution networks really are really diversified. We can reach our customers everywhere and our customers can find us everywhere. In particular, we've got networks of agents in Continental Europe and were global leader when it comes to direct insurance. Our competitiveness which we enjoy, thanks to our size and our depth of a customer base and underwriting capabilities positions us well compared with our peers who are less diversified and much smaller.

And at a time like this, when lots of you be questioning, the trust we should have in our companies, we see that we, as a company, are indeed a trusted brand. We're seen as a brand that inspires trust your confidence and our customer satisfaction has always been in the forefront of our concerns and will remain the center stage of our ambitions too. All of this means that AXA is a group that is now much simpler, more streamlined, much more diversified with a profitability profile, which is among the best in class in our industry.

We have at the start of the upgoing plan, all of the assets in hand to go out and conquer new market shares. And that is also what is really at the heart of our upcoming plan going forward. Our key ambition is the spirit of conquest, conquest of new customers and also new market shares, of course, but also the conquest in terms of competitiveness to remain attractive for our customers and be highly performing for our shareholders at the same time.

When we talk about conquest, in the Club BBR Atrium here, well, that resonates with AXA history which has always been a history of conquest. So what does that boil down to in precise terms? Our new plan, our new strategic plan really dovetailed around four pillars. Firstly, we want to be at par with the trust of our customers. Secondly, we want to enhance even more our competitiveness. Thirdly, we want to put in the forefront of what we do throughout our organization, we want to scale AI. And fourthly, we want to build up future leadership by designing the insurance of the next decade, which will innovate so as to come to terms with all of the challenges we have ahead of us, that's the climate challenges, the technology challenges, but in particular, the demographic challenges. This plan will start off on the 1st of January 2027 and will be completed at the end of 2029.

Now the first pillar of this plan consists of using our customers' trust sees to enhance our growth. That is we want to retain, loyalize our customers and at the same time, continue to improve their experience. We also want to leverage all of our distribution channels. That will be combined with the power of AI, and it will help us to win this battle in the conquest that I was talking about. We also want to consolidate our positions in places where we're already strong, places where our growth potential is high. What do I mean by that? For example, I'm thinking of Health and Savings direct insurance as we're leader globally in direct insurance. Also inclusive insurance, how can we find an offer insurance solutions to about 20% of the population who haven't got the resources right now to buy insurance, how can we protect them?

And also inclusive insurance in emerging markets. There are the international markets where we're present. We're present in 17 countries with a lot of potential. There's a lot of growth momentum going on there. So thanks to all of these initiatives, our objective is, therefore, to go beyond EUR 10 billion worth of underlying earnings in 2029 and go past 100 million customers, that is have a customer base that will exceed 100 million persons. So this growth can be sustainable and profitable only if we remain competitive.

And as I was saying earlier, this is our second pillar in our strategic plan. And to that end, we've got to further bolster our technical excellence. How can we do that? Obviously, in terms of pricing and in underwriting, we will continue to fine-tune our models and integrate structured data so as to offer products and prices that are even more in line with people's needs and more precisely priced. And in terms of Claims Management, claims handling, we want to enhance Claims Management, make it faster, more precise and also more free flowing for our customers.

Also lastly, we're going to continue bolster our cost control efforts, so that in all of our business lines, we will be at the best possible level and be the best-in-class in our industry and AI will help us out a lot there. It will, in fact, be a key enabler because AI will enable us to amplify all of these levers. And no doubt, the third -- will be the third pillar too, of course, in our plan.

Now the third pillar in our plan is to scale AI. If we really want to achieve all of the objectives of our going-forward plan, we're going to have to fast track in terms of AI, scale up AI. It's not as if we were inactive for the last 3 years. No, we built up all the foundations that were indeed very sound ones so that now we can build on those foundations and scale AI. We worked on the structuring of our data. We've worked on AI preparedness for applications, 80% of our applications are now AI ready. But what's very important is we've also worked a lot on the preparation, the training of our people, our employees. And as I've just said, I'm very happy that 80% of our employees use AI, now regularly and see that it's a benefit in their jobs every day.

Between now and 2029, AI will be integrated into all of our value chain. And to do that, there's only one path that you can trade, you've got to deploy it rapidly at the scale of the group, group-wide so that our solutions can prove their worth in all of our countries, all the countries we're present in. The key to success is always to combine our global reach, a global part with our local agility in our entities. And that's the model that we've always had. We do things in the central offices corporately that we can't do in the local entities, but the local entity remains the vehicle. That's the most important for the execution of the strategy. And we will see on the base of these processes that are already set up and tried and tested that we will be expecting value creation to the tune of EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million per year.

And obviously, if in this plan, we can do better and more, well, we won't hesitate. But this is a very important contribution into our results trajectory. But also our plan will have to help us to prepare for the upcoming decade. It's a 3-year plan because the lines of business we're in or long-term lines of business we're going out to conquer as we said, but we've got to prepare for the next conquest too. And it's in that sense, that the fourth pillar aims at constructing our leadership of the future. The training of our people, their engagement, their loyalty, vis-a-vis an entrepreneurial culture of conquest will be key for us going forward.

Another imperative requirement for me is the bolstering of our sustainability objectives in terms of the climate transition, but also, in particular, in terms of the cohesion of our societies, I think that is the biggest challenge ahead of us in all of our countries. We've got to create and design the insurance of the future. That means that we've got to come up with a response given the strong expectations of our clients, but also the strong expectations of the public authorities and our societies. We've got to all become promoters of prevention and resilience. And that's the reason why our next plan will address the acceleration of our agenda in order to have the prevention eventually at the heart of our offers for our individual customers, but also for corporate customers.

I would like to mention two examples. Today, we are supporting large corporate entities on prevention. And we have announced within AXA XL, dedicated entity department dedicated to the stock prevention. And I don't know if you have seen this, but we announced also the acquisition of a company, which is called SRM, which is a business, we were one of the shareholders, we are now a majority shareholder to strengthen the support to our customers when it comes to cybersecurity.

Another example has to do with nat cat, natural catastrophes in all countries, but more specifically in France, we want -- we offer services, for example, SMS alerts being sent, should there be hail events, for example, but also in France and which is something which I find very smart is to offer voucher to park the car and a roof should there be a hail storm. So our business as an interest is not only about compensating for damages, but also to support the major transformation of this world and also to help our customers, to help our businesses, to live a better life and also to leave more peacefully.

So this plan represents an ambitious strategy, specifically in this environment and this for the next 3 years, and it relies on the growing forward growth of that of a turnover that will be above 5% per year over the whole period of the plan. So this growth will enable us to reach the following financial objectives, operational growth that will be in the target of 7% to 9% per year, profitability of our equities between 15% to 17%, cumulative cash remittance around a EUR 25 billion over the whole period of the plan and also the distribution level at 70%, so payout ratio maintained at 70% for our shareholders.

So thank you for listening to me, and I will hand over to Guillaume Borie, who will dive into the details of some of the initiatives of this plan. Thank you for your attention.

Good morning to one and all, and thank you for being here today for the presentation of this strategic plan. And I will come back to a few initiatives, as Thomas indicated, we are introducing to you this morning a strategic plan, which is targeting conquest. And at the service of this conquest, we want to leverage on all aspects of our business. And you see that this plan is based on robust foundations, resilient franchise and the excellence of our performance that was reminded of by Thomas, and this is on the basis that we are now going to speed up.

Next slide, please. So when it comes to the objectives that we have and the different pillars to do so, we have the ambition to grow in all our businesses and to have a more than 5% annual growth over the whole period of this plan. So all our pillars and strategic priorities will aim at reaching these objectives, improving and enhancing competitiveness at the service of the quality of solutions offered to our customers, and therefore, to our ability to grow in terms of market shares.

As you can see over all our businesses, we have very specific targets when it comes to profitability, as you see the details on that slide. speeding up, scaling AI. We'll be at the service of value creation and also for the acceleration of our growth and with the strategic horizons for which we foresee EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million of recurring value for annual results, thanks to our AI-based initiatives.

Next slide. So here, you see the main initiatives, I was referring to. When it comes to growth, where we have here identified or put details per pillar for the objectives that we pursue. So first of all, the growth of our customer portfolio, as Thomas indicated, we want to go be the 100 millions of customers before the end of the strategic plan. And this will be supported by a speeding up of the strategic client retention, we want to decrease the people resigning their policy, were thinking of direct insurance, inclusive insurance and also our in international and emerging markets.

As you know, half of our business is Life Insurance, Savings, Pensions and Health. And for all these businesses, we see a huge opportunity of growth supported by the demographic development in all our businesses and also the need for social prevention. And there are opportunities to get an accelerated growth superior to the group because it will be at at least 6% over the period of this plan. I'm not going to go into details of the different initiatives that we -- that are part of this plan.

As regard to growth, as I said, we aim at improving the client retention, their loyalty, concretely in all our businesses, what we have seen today is that 1/3 only of our entities are better than the average local market when it comes to customer retention. So we have potential for improvement. That is significant objective that in the same manner as what we did for customer satisfaction over the two past strategic cycles, where we brought all our businesses above the market average level when it comes to NPS. So we think that we can significantly improve this situation and bring all our business to be above their local benchmark when it comes to retention. So this is what you see with the objective of improving our retention rate by plus 70 bps and 20 bps for medium and size companies.

And how can we do this? Well, mainly with two levers, AI at the service of the improvement of productivity of our networks, enabling all our distribution network to better understand more rapidly the needs of the customers and to offer them more rapidly the right tools that will -- that they need. And also the strong pillar is to improve the competitiveness of our solutions. So making sure that as our customers are usually with us during 7 to 9 years that each year, we offer pricing offer that is well tailored and that is facing and in line with the reality of their needs and that over time, we extend the period during which they trust us. So this objective of developing a loyalty is achieved thanks to the of our distribution network.

One piece of example that I can give you on this topic is everything that we do in France through our distribution networks. And this road map that we have in France will be also present for all our markets. So in France, we rely mainly on two levers. So keeping on speeding up the development of our exclusive networks, proprietary ones, general agents. And in the new strategic plan, we're going to keep on increasing the size of our networks by increasing the number of distributors to buy 600 distributors, and across all networks. And then we're going to speed up on the segment that is more stronger and stronger, Direct Insurance via direct [indiscernible] . And we see that a 2-digit growth that will be supporting the overall growth of AXA France for the duration of the next plan.

Now coming to some of our main business line and how we are going to manage growth in the future plan. First of all, and more than anything, AXA XL, as you now. When it comes to major risks, there is a slowing down of the cycle, which is significant. But however, we still see opportunities, real development opportunities with attractive margins and all AXA XL teams are determined to keep on developing these franchise and the revenue by investing in long-term growth opportunities.

So I'm thinking of what we're going to do in the U.S. to accelerate in the intermediate sized companies and businesses and to reach a segment that's just below the large companies, a very profitable market with 2-digit growth, less regulated and for which we have a major development opportunities. I'm thinking also of structuring opportunities, structural opportunities such as the speeding of investment throughout the whole word on defense and infrastructure solution. I'm thinking of data centers. insurance needs development on the basis of the expertise that we have at AXA XL, which will be key to conquer new customers. And energy transition, the speeding up of the development of renewables, everywhere throughout the world, creating needs of reinsurance, and we have already acknowledged as experts in this area. And we are the very first issuers of autonomous cars or autonomous vehicles in the U.S. through AXA XL. With the first developers of these new autonomous vehicles, which enable us to ensure autonomous vehicles today. And we see that we foresee significant growth in this area.

Then when it comes to different business lines of the group for which we identified significant growing opportunities growth opportunities. So I mentioned France. But generally speaking, we are leaders when it comes to direct insurance in Europe. And we want to speed up on the basis of this robust basis. Thanks to direct insurance, thanks to Prima, which is the first stakeholder of this market in Italy, and we acquired Prima last year and which is experiencing an outstanding growth, and you see that we aim at growing by more than 40% during the period of the next plan and also our attractiveness of Direct Insurance should grow by more than 10%, so supporting the overall growth of the group.

Same objective of speeding up on Inclusive Insurance. We have already important positions, but Inclusive Insurance covers all offers that we have throughout the world in emerging markets but in developed markets as well to target modest, low-income customers, customers needing insurance, not well supported by public coverage. And -- but that need prize this distribution network is key when they choose an insuring company. So we've made great efforts over the past years with the growth last year of 15% of this business. And we're going to through distribution partnerships that are significant in Spain, France, Mexico, that will enable us to target more specifically these customers. And we have an objective of of more than 8%, and that will be supporting the overall growth of the group.

One last piece of element, very important on accelerated segments, which will be a part of our international markets. After several years of repositioning ourselves on these markets where we actually simplified our geographic footprint, we are now present in 17 countries in which our growth is supported both by the growth of our distribution networks, but also by the increased penetration in core segments. This is areas where the conquest is not only about gaining customers from our competitors, but by increasing the penetration in the local market and concrete initiatives when it comes to distribution on this topic.

And when it comes to AI, for example, I'm thinking of what we do in Turkey, for example, to support our distribution networks and to grow when it comes to personal lines, will help us generate on all our emerging markets, a growth of around 15% per year that will be supporting the overall growth of the group. So you see initiatives that are very tangible to support the overall growth of the group on all P&C Insurance offers.

When we look at Life Insurance opportunities, we have the opportunity of a driving force of accelerated growth more than in the current plan. And that will be supported by the evolution, the development of expectations of our customers, as Thomas mentioned also, supported by our will to grasp these opportunities by extending our disposition next work and also by strengthening the competitiveness of our solutions. This is what you see on the following slides when it comes to savings.

On Saving Solutions. We want to speed up when it comes to innovation, having affordable solutions for our customers. We know that the topic around competitiveness, the solutions invoice to our customers is key. In Switzerland, we completely restructured our offer with the Life market share with the Swiss Smart Flex. And to give you an idea, over the past 4 years, we have moved from market shares from 13% to 19%, and we want to keep on accelerating for the next plan.

In Japan, we've innovated. We produced a solution which is unit-linked, health cover and protection products that are unique in the market that will enable us to grow at a fast-tracked rate. That's for Life and Savings, same growth that we foresee in Health. In Health, we've turned around our margins significantly in the current plan. And now we have sound basis to grow by 6% to 7% per annum, thanks to an integrated offering in most of our markets.

We propose insurance cover along with many, many health care services and easy access to health care network so as to provide a value proposition to our clients that's differentiating. So, you see we fast tracked our growth ambitions in Life and Health. Concerning all of this conquest objective as a whole, we're going to, of course, leverage AI, is going to be a priority in our transformation efforts. So AI will go through all of our value chain, as Thomas has said.

What you see here is the impact we already see. We think it's important to focus on that because artificial intelligence in AXA isn't sleeping in the laboratory or anything, is not an experimental phase or anything. In our current strategic plan, we -- which is called Unlock the Future, we've already implemented projects that are very concrete ones, very tangible ones enabling us to deliver the impact you see here on the screen.

Business impacts that are really precise with value creation in terms of the productivity of our distribution networks in terms of technical excellence, improving our pricing, improving the quality of underwriting, improving the claims handling pathways and also in terms of operational efficiency and productivity.

Our ambition in the Growing Forward strategic plan is now to utilize all of these initiatives and transformation so as to scale them up throughout the group, group-wide, combining our global strength. You've seen last week we announced our AI hub with our local execution capabilities because AI, artificial intelligence will be worthwhile only if it's used. So adoption by our teams will be key, and it's got to be steered locally, directly in all of our operations and it's got to be put at the service of our customers. It must be tailored to meet the needs of our customers. And those needs vary from one market or one geography to another.

On the next slide, I won't comment on the details here, but you see two very tangible examples of cases where AI can be rolled out more widely. You see the scaling-up effect. In some scopes, we already use these tools in the future, we will have widened the scope throughout the period of the plan. That's what will enable us ultimately to deliver the EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million of value that we referred to earlier. That's the impact therefore of AI on our P&L and at the service of our competitiveness.

Thank you for your attention. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll now give the floor to Alban, concerning our financial objectives.

Good morning, everybody. This is Alban, I'll now talk about the details of our figures, as Guillaume has just said. Before we go into the details of the figures for the upcoming plan, I'd like to dwell for a minute on the figures of the last two plans. Just to say that we achieved or exceeded all of our objectives -- financial objectives that we set ourselves that were more demanding from one plan to the next. That means that we have built up a track record of execution and performance. And we've also built up an extremely highly performing platform that we can now build on, which we can use to develop all of the initiatives that Thomas and Guillaume have presented.

Now we have a look at the figures for our results on the next slide. We wish to increase our underlying earnings per share by 7% to 9% in the period of the next plan. That's more than in the current plan. It was 6% to 8%. But what we should also underscore is that the money is coming in from at least the benefits rather of share buybacks will be lesser because of the upswing of the stock price. So we will hopefully then bring up our operating income. We are, therefore, going further in our ambition.

And the other thing you see on this slide is that we've got a business model that's balanced between P&C and Life & Health. And the two will see their results going up by 5% to 7% on average in the coming few years.

Now if we go into the details of P&C. As I was saying, we've built up a very highly performing platform, and we've got margins which are among the best-in-class on the market, if not the best. So the objective of the upcoming plan is not to just grow our margins further, it's to maintain our margins at the combined ratio of 91% and speed up in terms of growth.

We want to see a growth in P&C, that will be greater than 5%. And that should happen thanks to the measures we'll be enacting and that growth will be faster in personal insurance and for very small companies and SMEs and it will be lesser in XL, that is Corporate Insurance that is commercial lines. They've entered a softer part of the market for large corporate risks. So XL will have to focus on this profitability. It doesn't mean that XL won't grow. No, I'm not saying that. There are certain initiatives being taken so as to [indiscernible] That growth, but the focus will be different for XL. All told that growth of at least 5% for all of our P&C activity, stable combined ratio was 91%.

And fairly mechanically then we'll see our financial results growing by 6% to 7% in P&C because with the growth, we'll have a balance sheet that will be bigger, and we'll have financial returns that will be higher quite simply because we'll be replacing assets with a lesser return, buy assets with a higher return, thanks to the increase in the rates. So 5% to 7% overall for P&C.

Now for Life & Health, same objective, growth of 5% to 7%. Now when we talk about Life Insurance and Health and the financials that we make a distinction between short-term activities that Health and Protection, which like P&C, there are your policies that are then repriced [indiscernible] Every year can be repair. And in that part, of the market, we see strong growth in our earnings, 67% just because people need to buy insurance, they need to buy protection. And that's why we think we're very competitive in that segment and in the others, too.

And we also think that in this segment, we will further grow our profitability. We've improved by 3%. Our combined ratio in the current plan period in Health & Protection. And we think we can do even better thanks to better handling, protection, better pricing and, therefore, win a further point of combined ratio. In the long-term part, that is savings. And the results are crystallized with CSM, of course, which is the acronym -- we think we can grow the CSM release by 4% to 5% per year because our reserves have grown by 4% to 5% and 4% to 5% will come from the net cash flows, the additional savings that we'll be managing every year, from our -- coming from our customers.

And also, given the revaluation of our reserves that we'll be doing because of the interest that will be credited to our customers every year. So our financial income will go up there for a bit more moderately than in P&C, 4% to 5%, just because the duration of our assets is a longer-term thing. And therefore, it will take longer to replace assets with lesser returns by assets with higher returns. These financial objectives there, which are ambitious, would have less value if we hadn't, at the same time, got a business that is very resilient with foreseeable results, predictable results.

I'm emphasizing this. Let's take an example that you're all familiar with, which is the fact that today, we have a very diversified business. diversified in terms of geography, diversified also in terms of business lines. That means that we are not depending on any particular geography or regulator or economic status, we have the balance right between commercial lines and personal lines between Life & Health on the one hand and P&C on the other hand. So this diversification then enables us to be serene about our ability to deliver our results with a low level of volatility.

Another way of looking at our volatility, on the next page is to look at our solvency. We have the solvency level that is high 218%, as you see here, which should further grow next year, thanks to the revision of Solvency II that enabled us to gain 17 additional points of solvency. But what's very important is that we have very substantially reduced the sensitivities of the Solvency vis-a-vis financial impacts compared to 2021, our sensitivities are very low. What does that mean? That means that the robustness of our balance sheet has been strengthened considerably in the last few years.

Now the same thing could be said of our margins in P&C. We have the best margins, as we're saying, best-in-class P&C margins, but also we have one of the combined ratios that is the least volatile on the market. When you compare us to our main peers, you can see that we've been much more stable in our profitability with a combined ratio that was lower and less volatile. Here again, that's our ability in terms of management, reducing our exposure to natural catastrophes also managing inflation, I mean, some years ago, we started to get a handle over that. And in terms of reserving and so on, we have capabilities that could be very useful in the future. So we're quite confident going forward about our ability to deliver these results.

And on this last slide then, you can see our strong ambitions that is summed up here. There growing ambitions, most of them, compared with the current plan, the underlying EPS, you see here the CAGR, 7% to 9% growth is what we're reaming at, underlying return on equity and our dividends and share buyback should go up by 79% per year to -- so the underlying return on equity objective going up, it should be 15% to 17% and also the cumulative cash remittance coming in from our subsidiaries should go to roughly EUR 25 billion in the period of the next plan compared with an objective of EUR 21 billion for the current plan period. That means that we can grow our earnings and we can transform that growth in earnings into equity growth and growth in the shareholder returns whilst at the same time, having the monies we need, [indiscernible] We don't pay out. So as to fuel our future growth because the 25% then will be fueling growth.

The ROE will be high between 15% to 17%. So we're aiming at growing our results but also growing the value of the group. And I will now give the floor to Thomas for a conclusion.

Thank you, Alban. And before moving to you to a session of question and answers. I would like to come back to once again the topic around our commitment and the service of our employees and the society, because the positive news is that thanks to these dynamics launched through this new plan, we will be in a position to support our current commitments towards our teams on the first instance. And I said their commitment is key. And one of the key success factor. And we want to make sure that our employees do benefit from artificial intelligence. And we foresee an investment of close to EUR 130 million to train our employees on AI-driven transformations.

And then -- and this is also very important. We want to keep on fostering and more intertrepreneurial culture, thanks to talent management, active talent management and active recruitment policy. Once again, AI connected to a staff reduction and less recruiting. Well, we plan actually the exact opposite. We are foreseeing 30,000 new recruitments over the duration of that plant. And in parallel, we are not going to let go on our commitments to climate transition. We are going to continue our commitments in favor of climate transition because this is an emergent topic. And we are well on track to reach our objectives of decarbonization by 2030, and we will keep on investing in solutions that will support this transition.

And we also want to strengthen our efforts when it comes to the insurance connected to this transition. And as we've done in the past, we want to keep on working and to work even more on adaptation and prevention programs. And we want to make sure that both become core parts, core elements of our offers. And then we want to keep on contributing to social cohesion. And this through the inclusive insurance offerings. So this will be done also through the the support of our funds -- foundation, AXA Foundation for [indiscernible] And through nonprofit scientific projects. So as you have seen in this presentation, and thanks to new plan growing forward, we want to build the AXA of the future decades and this under the clear guidance. We want to become the best positioned insurer to meet the growing need of protection of our customers and also to meet the challenge of new risks. We want to conquer new market shares over all territories and also in all our business lines by being even more competitive. And growing forward relies on the transformation that had already been underway for years.

Our business model is well fitted to deliver and to progress forward towards this future in a serene manner. With going forward, we are building tomorrow's AXA, AXA of tomorrow that will be more performant, more competitive and AXA that will be even more innovative. And -- but also listening to the needs and expectations of our customers, but also AXA contributing to the society to a more resilient society to a more inclusive society.

We'd like to thank you now for your attention. And we have time now to further discuss around our great ambition, one for 2029. It's 100 million customers, [ EUR 10 billion ] profit. So we are sure that to ensure a regular growth of our results, about earnings and to develop growth in the long run for all our stakeholders, well, this is what we need to do. Thank you for your attention, and we move to a Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]

[indiscernible] from the [indiscernible]. Two questions on the cat nat budget, do you mentioned the combined ratio. Do you keep the budget in view of the revenue percentage? And do you think this is dangerous? When it comes to cybersecurity, could you be more specific on the revenues, on the earnings, the developments and -- is it a growth potential that's important for you? And can you give us the threshold of the risk in this area as for others?

Thank you, Jean, for the 2 questions. I suggest Alban for the first question on the nat cat budget. Maybe we have also Scott, who is online with us for cybersecurity, Scott, who is in charge of AXA XL because cybersecurity is a business line that is very much present over there. And if Scott can hear us, this would be good. If you could tell us about the earnings, about the revenue and the ceiling of -- this will -- the answer will be given in English. Well, thank you for your question. And yes, we will keep our annual budget of 5% combined ratio for -- dedicated to natural catastrophes. So what you need to keep in mind is we have seen an increase of natural catastrophes in the South Europe, southern part of Europe with hail events in France, for example, and in other parts of the. But the model is a diversified model. So of course, this can have an impact, but we have an international footprint when it comes to natural catastrophes that enable us to balance from one year to another, the cost of natural catastrophes for us.

Thank you. With respect to cybersecurity, we're one of the larger writers of cyber insurance globally. And what we've realized during that time over the last few years is while the insurance product is important, but equally or even more important is the pre-loss and post loss activities, so we can try and prevent the loss from happening or help clients on their resilience and deal with these losses. The insurance is important. But more importantly is getting clients back up and running their business, and we learned during the years that, that's equally as important as the insurance product. So what we've done is, as Thomas mentioned, is that we have purchased the rest of SRM, which are specialists in dealing with that. It's not a large company, but it's a critical part of it, both for the business in and of itself, the prevention business, but more importantly, or equally important to allow us to enhance our cyber offering. And in today's world, we're getting a lot of requests and a lot of questions about how to deal with cyber in the AI world. And we think the prevention piece and the post-loss piece are going to be even more important in the future.

Jean-Luc referred in his question asked how we can combine the insurance coverage with the prevention in one single offering. We move to the next question.

Claudia Cohen from Bloomberg News. I've got 3 questions. The first one on the use of AI. I have seen your slide mentioning what you have observed when it comes to the use of AI internally in your companies, what it allows you to do. And I would like to ask you beyond this slide, have you identified consumers' behaviors using AI that may have come as a surprise to you with specific requests for which you may feel you will have to adapt. And then my second question is connected to climate hazards.

There is a lot of work, more work done on the side of financial entities to be able to better quantify those climate hazards. And of course, this will have an impact on the valuing of their assets in portfolios. When you are discussing with larger European banks, they usually say that there might be an issue connected to access to data on their side, namely data related to insurance -- so I would like to ask you whether you think that there is more collaboration needed between the stakeholders of the banking industry or the asset management industry and whether you have identified this problem around data as being an issue.

And my last question has to do with your mentioning insurance around data center as a market that is a growing market for you. Do you have more specific data on the insurance that you have subscribed in terms of volumes? Do you have if you estimated this market? And more than anything else, if you identified areas or types of data centers for which you consider that they represent a higher risk to do insurance on them or you don't want to go for that one?

So three very interesting questions indeed. I'm here with my team today. And this is the reason why we are going to ask them pick up on the different questions. So the first question connected to AI and what surprised us. I suggest that Patrick Cohen, who is the Head of the Europe business line and Mathieu Godart, who is in charge of France. Maybe both of you can say a few words. And then climate risk and collaboration with bancassurance, Francoise Gilles, who is Group Chief Risk Officer, will answer this question and has this question on his desk -- on her desk on a daily basis. And regarding data centers, I will ask Charles Gunter to give you an answer because Typically, this is a risk that is covered by AXA XL because in Europe, we don't have a lot of data centers and unfortunately, but this is something that is more frequently encountered in the U.S.

So Patrick, first of all. Thank you for your question. I will start by reminding you an important idea that was presented by Thomas and Guillaume and Alban earlier. In terms of AI, we are no longer experimenting. We are in an industrial phase. So we have a database of contacts or a series of contact with our customers, enabling us to understand how they respond to this new technology. It's a very first important is that AI enables us in our current business, our daily business enable us to move forward when it comes to customer service. This is a new brand-new horizon.

AI can summarize a policy contract in 40 seconds. Even if it's 40 can answer in a few seconds. It's a 24/7 availability can provide an answer through a conversation with the customer. AI is also and foremost a better advice and better offers for our customers. To be more specific on what surprised us. Well, I will give you a very recent example at Prima. And Prima launched for the several months now, vocal AI in call centers to manage renewals or people having a new address or renewing they are exchanging vehicles. So it's very important for us to know whether their satisfaction is real. So 40% of productivity, thanks to technology and 92% of satisfied customers. So AI is an evolving technology. Prima, which is at the forefront of this technology, 92% of satisfaction for an interaction with vocal AI in the callcenter.

Mathieu, very quickly because I think there are numerous questions to come.

Very quickly. So what we have observed in terms of behavior changes, it has to do with the savings. So customers seeking information on allocation offers for their savings. And very often, the allocations are different depending on whether you ask it to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. And we have a real asset here is the -- through the expertise of our distributors, knowledge of the customers. So the 360 advice they can provide on the basis of this accurate knowledge that they can use, and we've made huge efforts on the quality of our data. These are real assets, thanks to which we can differentiate ourselves, increasing the expertise of our distribution networks, capitalizing or leveraging on the use of data. And also I think this is a very good piece of advice that we can give in view of AI. And I think we have a beautiful future ahead of us, Francois.

Thank you, Francois. Scott, on the data centers.

Yes. On the data centers, we've been involved with the data center business for a number of years now and mainly on the construction side, but we'll also be involved in the operational side. You have the big hyperscalers, which will take -- we get a lot of press around the hyperscalers. That will take pretty much the entire insurance marketplace to deal with given the size of the values. Our -- we do that business, but our sweet spot is sort of the medium-sized data centers. They don't get the same press coverage, but they're around the world. We're engaged with them globally, both on the construction side. Our loss prevention teams are really important to them, both from a cat management standpoint as well as other infrastructure issues. So we bring a lot of value to the data centers and our experience in energy transition, new ways to producing power really come into play and will come into play in the future for those data centers. So we view that opportunity in the data centers plus other sovereignty investment areas as an important part of our growth opportunity for the next plan.

Thank you, Scott. We'll move on to the next question now. Florian from Assurance.

I have a few small budget questions, if I may. It's kind of fashionable at the moment. Are you speaking about us or about others Thomas program. And you've talked about EUR 130 million for training the staff in terms of AI. Have you a more general budget for your capital expenditure that you're going to do in AI within the period between 2027 and 2029, the plan period. Also, you've talked about grasping opportunities quite a lot. I'd like to know if like some of your colleagues, you would communicate on the budget connected with acquisitions potentially over the period of this plan. And then a couple of last small questions. In the 17 countries you mentioned that you're located in, will the simplification effort be over? I mean, is it now completed? And a word then on strategy and reinsurance. I'd like to hear a bit more about your strategy concerning reinsurance, please.

Thank you. On the first topic, the AI budget, Matthieu Card, who is in charge of technology and operations might be the person to answer that apart from the training question. But I'll talk about the acquisitions that you mentioned and simplification. Well, the 17 countries, we've chosen them well, and we're present in those countries, and Hassan will probably tell us what's happening in those 17 countries because in terms of growth, they're a big driver for us. They're a big growth engine. And the last question on strategy and reinsurance, maybe Alban will take that question. So okay, let's start off then Matthew, maybe, Matthew.

Yes. Thank you for raising this question. We're continuing to invest heavily in technology and AI. in the upcoming plan that will continue, of course. We don't make a distinction necessarily between what is purely related to AI and what's not because it's a continuum with the underlying technology and the business transformation that flanks it. So it's investment that will continue to be -- to run at a high level for us. And I'd add to that, as Thomas referred to earlier, apart from the plan that we have now to enable us to say there should be EUR 500 million, EUR 700 million recurring savings. But we have some pilots we're running that should enable us to fast track the transformation towards AI. And our investment decisions will, of course, depend on those new technologies, these new opportunities that will come in, what will work best in terms of our customer behavior patterns so as to drive the most benefit for our clients.

Thank you, Mathieu. On the acquisitions, it's fairly clear actually. You've seen the presentation of the plan that is really focused on organic growth a lot. I mean that's our main focus. We're going to spend most of our time on that. Of course, we're going to have a look at opportunities that may arise if they arise. I mean, we should project the past into the future in a way. We've made some acquisitions. name Prima was mentioned a few times in Ireland, too. We bought a company also pretty mature portfolio in Spain. So that's the kind of acquisition we could contemplate. But our main focus for the moment is organic growth, earn market shares, win further market shares organically. And if there are acquisition opportunities, we'll have a look at them, but we won't be spending all day and all night on acquisitions. The 17 countries.

Okay. Thank you for raising that question. I'm reassured to hear you're interested in the international and emerging markets, too. So we have very strong growth in the emerging countries. And to answer your question, it's a portfolio that's being chosen. As Thomas said, it does represent very well the growth we want to see in the future. Just to give you some figures. In Latin America, for example, we're located only in 3 countries, but that represents 63% of all of the insurance market in the continent. So we're in the right countries. Now if you look at Africa, we're located in 5 markets with Turkey, that represents 70% of the market.

In Asia, Southeast Asia, -- we have partnerships with banks who are leaders in their markets who give us access to more than 50 million customers. So these are positions that are very exclusive that we have in those countries. So with 17 countries that we manage by just 11 entities, it's a hub process we have for the simplification you mentioned. And the idea is to support the transformation that Thomas has pursued 10 years ago, simplify, simplify, simplify, that's the by word, to create synergies between the countries when we can. And to that end, we manage 17 markets, but by 11 entities only. So to streamline things.

Thank you, Alban on reinsurance. So I understand your question, Florent, on reinsurance. Firstly, it's a very profitable business, reinsurance business. The combined ratio is a bit less than 80%. So it's a business that does contribute very well to the group's earnings. As you know, the amount of equity overall invested in reinsurance has gone up. It was a bit less than EUR 600 billion and now it's EUR 700 billion. Now there's a lot of equity, so that weighs on the prices. We've entered a downward part of the cycle. So our strategy will be to focus on profitability and pick up the best pieces of business to be done, also use more and more ILSs that's the way of seeding our own risk to third-party investors. And that will enable us to keep the right balance between the business we have in our books and the business -- pieces of business we see to third parties.

Thank you, Alan. I think there's a question online. Perhaps we can take that. Yes. Next question is from Ben Dyson from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Yes, I just wanted to ask a little bit about AI and the EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million recurring value. I hope you can explain a little bit about what that means, whether that's an effect on the profit and also whether that's net of the capital expenditure you expect to make in AI or if it's separate from that?

Thank you, Ben, for your question. Guillaume, I think you would be best positioned to answer. It's about the AI benefits, the EUR 500 million to EUR 700 million, whether this is net of expenditure and how you see this evolving over time?

Yes, absolutely. So the short answer is that it is a net impact. So it does take into account the investment and obviously, the likely increase in the run cost of our technology systems, given the fact that we indeed plan to see an increase of those costs. That's also why in our model, we have put a strong emphasis on global management of the providers we access to in order to put the spend under control and make sure that going forward, we have sufficient flexibility to switch from one provider to another, depending on what we exactly need to deliver the internal solution and obviously, the evolution of the cost of those solutions.

This important element is critical to us because we don't want to take the risk of being locked in with some specific technology solutions. And so that's the whole benefit of having a global AI hub combined with local execution of our transformation strategy.

Thank you, Guillaume. We are coming towards the end of our session. Is there any last question? There's one. Okay.

My name is Miguel Moreno. I'm from the Spanish newspaper. I've got a couple of questions, please. Mr., I gathered you mentioned in your presentation that AXA is already ensuring certain risks connected with AI. And I'd like to know, please, what type of risks you're talking about here? Some people think AI is a threat for mankind. And you've also mentioned that AXA XL was already proposing insurance for autonomous cars, driverless cars. And have you a specific agreement that you entered into with Tesla? I'd like to know if you have a specific agreement with Tesla.

Thank you for your question. I'll perhaps make a general comment on AI insurance and then Scott Gunter, who is in charge of AXA XL, will talk to us a little bit more about AI insurance and also talk about the insurance of driverless cars, autonomous cars and the potential partnership with Tesla. I think that regarding AI, firstly, as Scott has just said, AI today is very present in the cyber world because AI, unfortunately represents an opportunity for criminal deeds. You can automate your criminal deeds in certain ways. We've seen the use of AI in the cyber universe.

So as Scott has just said, cyber insurance just in terms of cover would probably be very hard to put in place in an enduring way if it's not accompanied by efforts regarding prevention. The company has to make sure that the fact of being -- I mean, it's important to be insured and reinsured in terms of cyber, but it's also got to protect itself. with its own firewalls and whatever else, lines of defense vis-a-vis the outside and also on the inside, of course, create an awareness among its employees that they shouldn't open phishing e-mails and give talk to strong passwords, that kind of thing. And as Scott has just said, maybe set up arrangements within companies in the event if there were an attack, a cyberattack that they could very quickly get back to business as usual again. Scott, we'll give the floor to you, if you like. Autonomous vehicles and a potential collaboration or not with Tesla.

Yes. Thank you, Thomas. With autonomous vehicles, we've been working with a number of -- I can't comment specifically on Tesla. We don't give information with respect to individual clients. But we do work with a number of autonomous vehicle developers Part of it is obviously the business opportunity, but also we want to learn along with them how the exposures work. So -- and it varies by country and it varies by region. But what we're really trying to develop is an understanding of how the vehicles work, what are the legal ramifications if there's an incident or an event, who's responsible if there's no drivers. And it's beyond just autonomous vehicles. Vehicles get a lot of the conversation, but there's autonomous -- a lot of other autonomous. There's ships, there's drones, there's planes. So it's a broader understanding than just the vehicles itself. And then we work with a number of companies who are building out that capability. It will be very interesting over the next few years as this becomes autonomous things become more and more common in our societies.

Thank you, Scott. Combined to this, the type of risk, the nature of risk is different if you have a standard insurance for your car for a standard car, is there a different risk for an autonomous vehicle, which in terms of liability of the company manufacturing or operating this autonomous vehicle. Well, thank you very much for your questions. It's now 10:00. So thank you for your presence and for your interest in AXA, and I wish you a beautiful day. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AXA conference call on the AXA Group Financial Results for the Half Year 2026. [Operator Instructions] 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 CFO, 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 plus 5%. We have also delivered plus 8% underlying earnings per share growth, which is at the top end of our target range, 6% to 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%.

And 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 are 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% to 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 & 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. And these results confirm AXA's positioning as an all-weather company, able to navigate changing market conditions and to deliver consistent performance over time. If we go to the next page, when you look at the earnings growth across our 4 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. And 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. What 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.

So 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 remain -- 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, and good morning to you all. So let me now go through the key numbers of the first half, and I will start with P&C. So we delivered excellent P&C results with earnings up 6%. And as Thomas said, we achieved these results while enhancing our reserve prudence. -- and performance is strong on all fronts, growth, best-in-class margins, lower non-commission expenses and higher investment income. Our P&C combined ratio remained at a strong level, 90.1%, up 10 basis points versus half year '25, and 30 basis points if you exclude Prima. This 30 basis point increase fully reflects the EUR 0.1 billion losses incurred by AXA XL in the Middle East. But if I exclude those Middle East losses, AXA XL Insurance undiscounted loss ratio was stable.

While it improved by 50 bps in Commercial lines ex-XL, and by 20 bps in retail. So excluding Middle East losses, we were able to improve the loss ratio across all our insurance businesses. Nat Cat was stable at 3.5%, and that's below our 4.5% normalized Nat Cat load. Expense ratio was also stable with a 40 bps improvement in non-commission expenses, offset by higher commissions and those higher commissions reflect a change in business mix. Reliance on PYDs was low at minus 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, and also disciplined asset reallocation from private equity and real estate into private debt. And so 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 2 million net new contracts in this first half versus EUR 1.7 million in the whole year in 2025. So this excellent momentum comes with strong margins. Current year combined ratio was down 50 bps in retail, excluding Prima and 10 bps 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 minus 1%. We also achieved lower reinsurance 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. So overall, these are high-quality results with strong top line growth, best-in-class margins and higher investment income. And this provides an excellent foundation for future growth. Let me now move on to Life & Health. Premiums were up 8% and earnings up 11%. Both our short-term and long-term businesses delivered strong performance. In short-term Life & Health, insurance revenues were up 5%. Technical margins grew by 53%, with 130 bps 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 & 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 to 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 and that we mentioned at full year. This rebasing boosts the growth versus half year '25 as it did when we compared full year '25 to full year '24.

We expect continued growth in reserves with the CSM release growth for full year '26 more in line with our guidance of greater than 3% since full year '25 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. So if we move to this slide, which summarizes our earnings, we delivered 4% underlying earnings growth, but 9% excluding AXA IM. And you see that it's a very strong performance on all fronts. Net income was up 9%. At half year '26, financial flows were minus 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.

So 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 minus 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. Solvency II ratio was at 218% at half year '26. As you know, on January 1, our Solvency II ratio was 215% following the end of the grandfathering period, representing a minus 10 points impact versus December 31, 2025. On top of this impact, our ratio was up 3 points in the first half of the year, driven by the following: first, plus 17 points of normalized capital generation, reflecting strong earnings and limited capital needs to fund our growth.

And in particular, we benefited from the acceleration of growth in Life & Savings because growth in Life & 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. Minus 12 points from dividends and annual share buybacks as expected and minus 3 points from economic variance, mainly driven by higher inflation expectations and the widening of government and corporate bond spreads. So 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 '23, we have achieved strong organic growth at 7% CAGR.

Our P&C margins improved by 160 bps, including a 40 bps impact from losses in the Middle East. In P&C retail and in P&C Commercial lines ex-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 & 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 3 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. So this track record of execution lays the foundation 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 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 the 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 will present the new strategic plan in detail in September, on the 15th of September in Paris, and then followed by an event on the -- on September 21 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 said, let's open for Q&A. And as the operator said, it would be great if all of 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.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Andrew Baker with Goldman Sachs.

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? And I guess, if possible, for the deterioration that we saw in the second quarter versus 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 previously flagged versus true sort of underlying pricing deterioration?

And then secondly, -- apologies if this goes against the rules, but -- and it could be more of a CMD topic. But if I look at your solvency ratio for '27, obviously, including the Solvency II review benefits, it looks to be around sort of 240% or so, which feels very high, both on a stand-alone basis or versus history. So I guess, is the preference to bring this down over time? And if so, what are your preferred levers to do so?

Thank you very much, Andrew, for your 2 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. But assuming that you are right, which you most likely will be, yes, I mean, 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. And as we said, we want to build the next plan on a position of strength. When it comes to the first question, and I'll let Scott go into more detail.

I think, as I said to you, I'm very pleased with the performance of XL because Scott and his team have achieved stable margins in an environment that is not easy. And we have to compare ourselves always against the market and XL has managed to have a better pricing than the market. And when I personally look at how to evaluate the performance of XL, I don't look at the price increases or decreases. I look at the underlying earnings. And what I'm very pleased to see that in this difficult environment, 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. [indiscernible] an important area for us. Pricing was less than minus 1%. There's a lot of products in there, a lot of mix, which is slightly below trend, but not much trend, only a couple of points there. So we're very happy with the performance of the specialty business. And then sort of the topic around property. We were minus 7% for the first half. North America property, give you a little idea on mix was minus 10%. And give you a sense, our property business, we write very little of the sort of the coastal cat-exposed property business that has been the topic of conversation over the last couple of weeks.

You may remember when we sort of took a lot of our cat exposure out of the portfolio a few years back, we're not -- we have a little bit of that, but very little of that business along the coast. So we're more of a large account primary writer of that business. And so while rates are down, it continues to perform very, very well and still is an excellent line for us because the price have gone up quite a bit in the last few years.

Thank you, Scott. We move on to the next question.

The next question comes from Fahad Changazi with Kepler Cheuvreux.

Could I ask what was the benefit to AXA XL's H1 '26 earnings from lower reinsurance costs? And at Q1 '26, I believe we were expecting AXA XL's pricing to be stable to slightly negative, and I appreciate it's not the asset level pricing. But is that still the expectation for full year '26?

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.

So at Q1 '26, I believe the expectation for AXA XL's pricing outlook was stable to slightly negative. Is that sort of still the expectation for full year '26?

Very good. So I would suggest Scott is answering both questions, one on the benefit of lower reinsurance cost and the second one on the pricing. I mean, 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 of reinsurance in the first half was about 30 bps. We're still -- obviously, a lot of those treaties are 1/1, so it takes a while to work its way through the insurance portfolio, but it's approximately about 30 points. In terms of outlook, I think we're in -- we have a very diverse product mix. We -- for AXA XL, we sell 400 different insurance products across 26 different countries. So there is no one market here. So each -- we look at each product and each geography. But we do -- generally speaking, we do expect sort of 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 sort of maintain where we're at. And then the property business, we expect to be selective on opportunity there. So we think that the market is -- in total, you might say it's softening, but it's -- there's still plenty of opportunity for us in most of our lines of business.

Thank you, Scott. Let's move on to the next question.

The next question comes from Farooq Hanif with JPMorgan.

I'd like to ask Alban actually about Slide 35 and Prima and just some of the mechanics around modeling it. So thank you for the slide, by the way. But as we move forward, is the way to do it to bring down the MGA. So 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 guiding to 2H and going forward about just the mechanics of modeling that, that would be very helpful. That's question one. And question 2 is in the P&C business, I know you talked about the higher investment income trend versus [ IFI ]. But 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 versus the [ IFI ]? And could you explain again some of the drivers behind this?

Thank you, Farooq. So I would suggest Alban is answering both questions on Prima and on the investment income.

So in a stabilized moment, which will be in 2027, you will see that we will have recaptured probably 90% of the premiums generated by Prima. And so you have on screen the current pro forma P&L of Prima from a technical basis. And to give you a bit more about this, Prima grew by 30% its premiums in the first half. So 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 claims reserves. So as we recapture the premiums, we will progressively build the reserves and have the assets and therefore, the investment income on those assets.

And you see the combined ratio at 87.5%, which reflects the technical profitability of Prima. So that's in a stable state in '27. For the time being, as you know, Prima is for us still an MGA only. And that's why it had the impact on the loss ratio and the expense ratio because obviously, there's no loss and there is expenses for -- in front of revenues. And 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. And then on investment income, -- so we reinvested overall in P&C at a rate of 4.6% over the first half. And so going forward, we will keep on reinvesting at that higher rate. And so we are still very confident that we can grow our investment income in P&C and clearly above the increasing cost of [ EPA ].

Just quickly, one follow-up. Do we continue with the MGA earnings? So in 2027, for example, if you had 90%, you still have 10% of MGA. Is that the right way to think about it?

So we have 53% of the MGA -- and we will have 100% of -- or 90% because in '27, there's still a bit of leakage of the premiums and reserves. So you can assume 53% of the technical earnings and the investment income will be for us entirely.

Next question comes from Andrew Crean with Autonomous Research.

A couple of questions. Firstly, you talked quite a lot about reserve prudence currently. Is there anything more figuratively or can you quantify that in any respect for us? And then secondly, I noticed that the retail 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. And 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. I mean, as usual, I feel 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% versus a normal cat load of 4.5%. And as you know, we manage discount, Nat Cat and PYDs altogether. And 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.

Andrew. So on retail pricing, it has indeed slightly improved further out of already a very strong base in the second quarter. And 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 and 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. And 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.

And just one additional figure. We gained 2 million net new contracts in the half year, which was more than all of 2025. So that underpins that is 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.

Perfect. And just 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, you probably -- it's probably at your elbow. First one, mid-market, there are some numbers -- but could you give us a little bit 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. And my second one is on cash, it's the only metric where there's no feeling that things are getting better. It's -- 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 2 years. So there's not -- to get to EUR 21 billion, 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, Michael. So for your first -- very first question on the holiday, we do take a holiday, absolutely, but it's still 6 weeks until the Investor Day. So we won't take a holiday of 6 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.

So Michael, thank you for your 2 questions. On the first one on mid-market lending, there's little news really because we have the same investment policy, the same selectivity in what we do with our asset managers. So we have roughly EUR 10 billion of mid-market lending. The average line is EUR 7 million to 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% to 25% of the deals they come up with. So on top of their own selectivity, we add ours.

And so with this, we still see extremely good performance and no pickup in default rate in this portfolio at all. On cash, I'm sorry I'm 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 excluded AXA IM, we reaffirmed this target even though, obviously, we are not getting the dividend from AXA IM. So yes, we will be above the EUR 21 billion.

Thank you, Alban. Let's move on to the next question.

The next question comes from Will Hardcastle with UBS.

On the personal lines in P&C, the 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? And 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. Then 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. Or is this a pretty fair reflection of where the U.K. market is at the moment?

Thank you very much, Will. On those 2 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. And this has also enabled us to do it fast and then be able to benefit from our pricing of others. We still see this happening. And 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. But Continental Europe is relatively homogeneous. And so we will continue this journey of holding margins or improving margins while gaining contracts.

And 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. And as you know, our policy and philosophy is clearly, we're not hunting for volume. We are hunting for profitability. And 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. And 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.

As at the 1Q stage, I'm trying to get a better handle on how your admin expenses are driving non-life and life value chains. So 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. And now we're in the first half, could you also give a hint of what the claims handling expenses are in the attritional loss ratio, please? And then 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? And 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. So if you could explain that a bit, that would be great.

Thank you, William, for your almost 3 questions. Alban will answer them around the question of admin expenses, claims handling expenses and then the Slide 14 question around the CSM and admin expenses. Alban?

Thank you, Thomas. William, -- so on the expense ratio, at half year, the non-commission expenses stood at 9.7%, and they were at 9.9% in the half year '25. And the claims handling costs, as you know, are included in the loss ratio and therefore, are not disclosed separately. On the CSM walk, I'm thinking about the right way to think about it. I would say -- we have the same reduction in expense overall, as you've seen in P&C. Overall, our non-commission expense, and you have the minus 40 bps on screen, we are accelerating very clearly as was planned in '26 versus '25. The expense ratio will probably come down this year by 30 bps.

So that overall for the whole plan will be at minus 50 bps as was announced when we created that plan. And that minus 30 bps that we will have for all our non-commission expense within the group is probably evenly distributed between P&C, Health and Life. So you should take that into account when you want to model your CSM roll forward.

Thank you, Alban and William. We move on to the next question.

The next question comes from Iain Pearce with BNP Paribas.

The first one is just on the non-XL commercial businesses. There seems to have been a couple of fairly sizable pricing moves Q1 -- or 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 2 markets in terms of pricing, but also just more generally in terms of mid-market and SME pricing and the sort of if you're seeing any decelerating trends there? And the second one is just on the improvements in the short-term technical performance in the Life & Health segment and 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 sort of positive experience that you're seeing? Just trying to sort of see if we should be viewing that 96% combined ratio as a starting point going forward.

Thank you, Iain, for your 2 questions. I suggest Alban is handling both of them.

Sorry, I hadn't taken my mic. So I'll start with the second one. On this, in the Health & Protection business combined ratio, there's no prior year development. It's really the current year. So it's the right basis to project on this. On the non-XL Commercial lines, -- so we have seen -- you referred to EMEA and Latam. We have seen some softening in Mexico, in particular, in terms of pricing. Otherwise, from -- 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. And therefore, that's probably the -- that's certainly the reason for the change in pricing that you see between Q1 and Q2.

The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner with Berenberg.

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, way above it. But you did say you'd have more. And 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 number of shares -- average number of shares for '26, please? I know you say you probably say what you can work it out, but I'm always puzzled when the buybacks happen.

So Michael, I thought you had another holiday question for us, but you didn't. So the number of shares, we will do -- Alban will do that. On the health piece, I mean, 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 & Health combined ratio has improved by 310 basis points. Alban, on the shares?

So on the number of shares, we have -- we are done with our share buybacks for the year. So the number of shares between half year and full year should be stable at EUR 2.023 billion.

Thank you, Alban. So 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.

That's very kind. 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? And 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?

Alban, I think you can handle both questions on the regional variability. I think it's important to point out France versus the rest of the world.

Absolutely. And thank you for your 2 questions. So on the first one, -- so the Middle East impact of EUR 0.1 billion, that's an impact as of 30 June. And 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. But so by definition, it is a 30th June impact. I would say at this stage that probably 1/3 of it is a case reserve and 2/3 it's IBNR, simply for the reason as well that it's difficult to visit the sites for reasons that you can imagine.

On the Nat Cat loss, it's really driven by France and Southern Europe to some extent, but in France, in particular, -- we've had some hail storms in May. France, in general, has a higher cat load than the average of the group at 5% versus 4.5% for the group average. But for the first half, they were at 5.6%. And that obviously does not take into account the recent wildfires for which we have no estimate at this stage.

Thank you, Alban. And 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, and have a good day. Bye.

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AXA First Quarter 2026 Activity Indicators Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Anu Venkataraman. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to AXA's First Quarter 2026 Activity Indicators Call. Our Group CFO, Alban de Mailly Nesle, will walk you through the highlights, after which we'll be happy to take your questions. Alban?

Thank you, Anu. Good morning to all. Thank you for joining the call today. So let me start with the key highlights. As you saw, we delivered a strong performance in the first quarter of '26. Total revenues increased by 6% to EUR 38 billion, well balanced across lines of business and geographies. And our Solvency II ratio at 211% reflects the robustness of our balance sheet after the end of the grandfathering period of January 1.

In the quarter, the group's financial strength was further affirmed by the decision from S&P to upgrade its ratings from AA- to AA. Let me now go through each line of business, highlighting what we expect for the year, starting with P&C. P&C revenues were up 4% with a healthy balance of volume growth and pricing in both Commercial and Personal Lines. In Personal Lines, revenues were up 7%, reflecting continued strong momentum across all geographies. We have delivered strong volume growth from expanding the customer base with 1.2 million net new contracts in Retail, Motor and Household, particularly in France and Europe in a favorable pricing environment with a 4% price effect over the period.

And we expect pricing to remain conducive and continue to see good opportunities to grow. Commercial lines grew by 3% with both higher volumes and positive price effect. At AXA XL Insurance, revenues grew by 2%, driven by volumes. In Q1, the renewal mix is skewed towards international business where pricing is holding up. On the overall book, pricing is stable versus last year. We continue to actively manage the cycle, growing in the lines where pricing meets our return hurdles. So we grew volumes in property with the business remaining at high profitability levels despite increased pricing pressure with rates on renewals decreasing by 4%.

In casualty, pricing on renewals was up 4%. And there, we are focused on customer retention and on maintaining our overall exposure. Specialty lines also grew by 1% with stable pricing at good profitability levels. In financial lines, renewal rates decreased by minus 2.5%, and we continue to be highly selective. So overall, pricing was stable in Q1. We believe we have room to grow XL sales earnings in 2026 through a combination of selective top line growth, combined with lower reinsurance prices, notably in property, active expense management and higher reinvestment yields.

In Commercial Lines ex XL, revenues were up by 4%. So this was driven by good price dynamic in Europe and in France with overall pricing at plus 3%. We also delivered volume growth, particularly in France, while in the U.K., market conditions are softer, and we are disciplined on growth. Outside the U.K., we expect the market to remain disciplined and to expand our margins as pricing is earned through. And finally, in reinsurance, revenues were down by 7%. Renewal pricing was down 3%, a good outcome in the current market. And we remain disciplined, and therefore, we have reduced volumes.

On nat cat, group nat cat experience in the first quarter was slightly better than the prorated annual cat budget with benign experience at AXA XL and despite losses in France from both Storm Nils and Goretti of EUR 0.1 billion overall. It's only the first quarter, so we maintain our annual nat cat budget of 4.5 points of combined ratio for the year. And finally, let me just say a word on inflation. So we closely monitor it, obviously. And you know that most of our P&C contracts are annually renewable. So that gives us the ability to adjust pricing based on market conditions.

In Commercial Lines ex XL, a significant portion of our premiums have some direct or indirect indexation to inflation and pricing conditions remain favorable. In XL, in casualty and to a lesser extent, in financial lines, social inflation is decoupled from general inflation. And therefore, the book that is mainly impacted by inflation is property, which represents less than 30% of the business and where underlying assets are revalued every year.

And in retail, as you saw, pricing conditions remain favorable. I would also add that the context is much better than in 2022. At that time, inflation had started before the Ukraine war and was compounded by it. So inflation will be impacted if the war in Iran lasts, but the impact is not immediate.

So in summary, in P&C overall, with these Q1 results, we're confident in our ability to deliver top line growth and margin improvement over the year. Now moving to Life & Health. In Life & Health, premiums were up 8% to EUR 16.5 billion, driven by strong performance. In the long-term business, premiums grew 9%, reflecting strong sales momentum across Unit-Linked, general account and protection. In short-term Protection & Health business -- sorry, revenues were up 6%, mainly driven by favorable price effects in Health across geographies as well as expansion in margins, including from the progressive recovery in Mexico, reflecting the actions we took to offset the VAT change.

We had strong net flows at EUR 2.7 billion versus EUR 2.5 billion in Q1 '25. And as you know, that will fuel growth in CSM and earnings over time. And we, like in P&C, remain confident in our ability to maintain this momentum. New business. So we grew new business CSM by 4% and notably more than 5% in life. This growth was driven by strong volumes in Savings and Protection with an 8% increase in PVEP and good margins. NBV was up 1% due to lower sales and adverse mix in our JVs in Thailand and China, offsetting the growth in new business CSM.

Moving on to Solvency II. So we continue to operate at a high Solvency II ratio that stands at 211% at the end of March. As you know, on January 1, our solvency ratio was 215% following the end of the grandfathering period that represented a minus 10 points impact versus December 31, 2025. On top of this impact, our ratio was down 4 points in the first quarter of the year, plus 7 points from normalized capital generation, minus 6 points of the accrued foreseeable dividends and annual share buyback, and also minus 4 points from unfavorable impacts from financial markets, reflecting notably higher inflation expectations and increased volatility of both equity and interest rates.

And I remind you that we estimated the Solvency II revision benefit at 17 points increase in our Solvency II ratio, and that will come into effect next year. Before moving to the Q&A, so let me conclude on how AXA is positioned in the current environment. We are off to a strong start this year, consistent with our ambition. We delivered strong growth in a conducive pricing environment in retail and commercial ex XL P&C. We captured growth opportunities at AXA XL in lines where our return hurdles are met, and we have a very strong momentum in Life & Health.

That's the benefit of our diversified business model because across lines of business and geographies, this model is built to deliver predictable earnings growth. And in the current volatile environment, we have a strong balance sheet with a solid 211% Solvency II ratio, prudent reserving and a disciplined asset allocation with high-quality assets and a low exposure to below investment-grade private credit on which we gave additional disclosure in our 2025 full year results presentation.

And the strength of our balance sheet, as I said at the beginning, was recently reaffirmed by S&P's decision to upgrade our ratings from AA- to AA. So all of this gives us confidence to deliver our 2026 UEPS growth at the top end of our target range of 6% to 8% and to sustain growth beyond 2026.

I'm now happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from David Barma, Bank of America.

Firstly, on Commercial Lines, please, on the volume growth, could you please explain where you see opportunities to grow right now. And within that, if you could please touch on the appeal of the casualty space, where it appears that the pricing is now starting to turn? And then linked to that, but on pricing, thanks for your comments in the introductions. Are you seeing an inflection in pricing in U.S. financial lines? And do you see a change in the attractiveness of the admitted versus the E&S market at this stage, which it appears we've been witnessing in the last few months? And then lastly, on personal lines. So pricing was good again in Q1, but there are several markets where your data suggests you might be at or slightly below inflation levels. So in the current macro context, do you think we might see a pickup in pricing across personal lines even if investment income is also attractive.

Thank you, David. So commercial lines, growth opportunities in casualty, that was your first question. So we should always remember that half of our Commercial Lines business is ex XL. That's our European and French business mostly. And there, we see good pricing and with 3% on average, 3% increase. And so we see room to grow there, except, as we said, in the U.K., which is softer and across all lines of business.

So I guess your question was more on the XL part. And on this, look, what we see is very clearly that in property, despite the fact that pricing is down by 4% overall, it's still very good business. And therefore, we have room to grow there. Casualty prices are up 4%. That's now slightly below the loss trend. But there again, we believe that given the current profitability, we can carry on growing. So then the question is more -- and specialty. Specialty is 20% roughly of our XL book. And there, pricing is broadly stable. It might even increase depending on where the crisis in the Gulf goes, and it's profitable. So we see also room to grow there.

On financial lines, that's where prices have been down for now a number of years. But we see some kind of bottoming out for the financial lines. Today, 74% of our business in financial lines is either flat or increasing in terms of pricing. So there are still a part which is decreasing. But I think at this stage, we see the end probably of that soft cycle. So we need to be vigilant, disciplined. But on this, this is a place where we believe that over time, we could grow again. Then on pricing, so I answered, I think, on financial lines, then you say E&S. E&S, it's both property and casualty, and it's both large and mid-market.

So typically, what you see in the admitted market, you see it in large property E&S in the sense that there is pressure on this. But the mid-market part resists better. And on the casualty side, you see the same as on the admitted business, which is still price increases, but a bit below loss trend. On Personal Lines, I would say, at this point, I wouldn't say that our pricing is below inflation. I think first, inflation is slightly different than general inflation because you know that it's about spare parts and labor and so on, but it's very correlated, obviously. And we take measures year after year to contain that specific inflation.

So at this stage, I believe that there is sufficient pricing to see margin expansion in personal lines this year. We'll see how inflation goes. But given the current context, it might well be that inflation would help that market to remain hard. That's the way I would characterize it.

The next question is from Farooq Hanif at JPMorgan.

Just to go back on volumes. If you take out Nobis and Prima, I mean, the overall volume growth looked like roughly 2% in 1Q. But if you take out those 2, what was the growth? And what do you think in percentage terms, you could maintain going forward in 2026 and beyond? My second question is on your updated thoughts on investment margin. So at full year '25, you're quite bullish, particularly in P&C, around where that kind of investment result could expand. I'm guessing you still remain confident. Has anything really changed there on your view? And the last point on nat cat versus reserve releases. I mean, you typically have managed periods of low nat cat with low reserve releases. Can you talk about what your attitude towards that is in 2026. Given that you're saying you are really well reserved, do you think you have to keep doing this? Or do you think there's some possibility here of you being able to use some of your reserving to support earnings in '26 and beyond?

Thank you, Farooq. So on the volumes, so Nobis and Prima are primarily on retail. I would say I might not have the exact numbers, but we had EUR 1.2 million of net new contracts, and they probably represented 1/4 of this. So you would still have between 900,000 and 1 million new contracts without those 2 companies.

On investment margin, so yes, we are very confident. One word on Q1. We -- in March, given the crisis, you saw spreads increase in the -- in public corporate bonds. And so we took advantage of that to accelerate a bit our investments of '26. So we did a bit more than the quarter in the first quarter. And so that gives us confidence that over this year, we will invest at the right level of return. So no change compared to what we said last year.

And on nat cat, look, I think what we said was that we would manage nat cat together with PYD and the discount benefit. We'll continue to do that around the 4.5% nat cat budget that we have. So at the end of the day, what we want is for that -- for those 3 elements taken together to be neutral on our earnings.

Just going back to volumes. In commercial specifically, it sounds like you are from what you said, you're looking to grow more in property and in financial lines if that stabilizes further. Is that the right way to think about it? So casualty a bit more flat, but growing in other areas.

I think what we want to do is to grow -- I mean, again, that's for XL specifically, I suppose. We want to grow our business anywhere where it makes sense. And the vast majority of our lines of business at XL meets their cost of capital. So what we are saying is we want to grow. Then as I said, the pricing is slightly below loss trend. So we will offset that lower margin by the growth itself, but also by cost reduction and by investment income going forward. And that's how we plan to grow XL's earnings this year and in the coming years.

The next question is from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.

I had 2. The first one is on the U.K. pricing and the second one is on the benefit of lower reinsurance costs. On the U.K., I wonder if you could add a little bit more color to your comments. It sounds as if the U.K. has got a black spot against it at the moment. But the data we're seeing here from O&S and other bits and pieces is that U.K. Motor has turned. And I just wondered if, instead in the retail, I think you've got a minus 0.9%. If we put a plus 1% or something, what would it do to the your appetite for growth in the U.K. and maybe to pricing overall?

And then the second on reinsurance, you said thanks to low reinsurance, that's one of the drivers of your kind of confidence on growing profits in commercial lines. Can you give us a feel for the -- how big that benefit is, please?

So on U.K. pricing, and I think, obviously, we need to distinguish between commercial lines and motor retail in general. Commercial line is soft, but starting from a very profitable environment. So we can -- so we want to be disciplined. We don't want to write business at a rate that wouldn't meet our cost of capital. And we see that the U.K. market is in commercial lines softer than what we see in Continental Europe.

On retail, we are growing our retail business in the U.K., and it's not done with price, I mean by undercutting rates. It's because we have developed a number of partnerships, notably with a large bank in the U.K., which is very successful and brings significant net new contracts. So pricing, as you said, in retail motor is not bad as we speak, and we are growing our business.

On the benefit of reinsurance, so we don't disclose the amount, but it is somewhat material at group level because as you know, we didn't change our reinsurance programs in terms of attachment and detachment points last year, for '26 versus '25. And therefore, we are fully benefiting from the price decreases that we saw. And those price decreases were more than 20% in property cat.

The next question is from Andrew Baker, Goldman Sachs.

First one on AXA XL. I think you mentioned first quarter more of a bias to international business renewals. So should we expect a bit more pricing pressure to come through as we move through the year just from a sort of more U.S. heavy mix? And is there any other seasonality in pricing we should be aware of? So for example, any quarters where you have more property renewals than other? And then on your casualty comments, so the fact -- I think you said pricing below loss cost trends, but still willing to grow. I hear what you're saying in terms of sort of volume and investment income. But given the uncertainty around the loss cost trend in casualty specifically, I guess curious just what gives you that confidence to grow off these levels? And then finally, sorry, just on Personal Lines. Growth in Motor looked really strong, but it did look like there was a slowdown in non-motor. Just curious sort of what drove that and how we should think about the growth in non-motor going forward?

Thank you, Andrew. So yes, you picked that comment on the International business versus Global correctly. So yes, it might be that the pricing at XL, which was stable in Q1 and turned slightly negative territory for the whole year. That being said, what you could also see is to offset that geographic mix change, a change in some lines of business. As I said, financial lines are probably bottoming out, and you might see a better momentum in those lines coming in the year.

So what we need to keep in mind is that it should be for the whole year between -- broadly stable to slightly negative. That's how we think about it. And there is no further seasonality that I have in mind. Clearly, Europe is mostly Q1, but at XL Insurance, that's the only thing that we should have in mind. On casualty, you said that there is uncertainty on loss trend. I wouldn't say that. The loss trend for casualty has been pretty stable in the sense that over the last 4, 5 years or even 6 or 7, the social inflation generally has been quite stable in the sense that the second derivative is nil. So we reserve on that basis. We price on that basis. And we don't see any reason now, be it in our numbers or in the global environment that would lead us to think that the social inflation or the loss trend in casualty should increase.

And in Personal Lines non-motor, I would say there's no particular reason. So to be frank, I don't have a very specific explanation on this. I would just say that in France, we managed to have both volume and pricing. And in some countries, it's been a bit negative in volumes and a bit positive in some other countries. So there's no specific trend generally.

The next question is from William Hawkins, KBW.

I've got a request and then a couple of questions appended. As Paul ordano knows, KBW has been doing a lot of work on admin expense leverage across the European insurers. And I hadn't appreciated so I did the work that you haven't disclosed divisional admin expenses since the conversion to IFRS 17. So do you think you could provide more transparency when we get to the 1H '26 financial supplement, please? I'm hoping that's an easy ask.

And then related to that, in the context of what you said about EPS growth, when you're talking about expense management, do you ever envisage absolute admin expenses falling as a driver of earnings growth? Or is it always going to be a relative game of saving and reinvestment for volume growth? So it's the ratio that improves? And then secondly, please, when you're doing your own expense analysis across your business units, where do you think you're best-in-class? And where might you see meaningful improvement potential?

Sorry, on the last question, best-in-class in what dimension. I didn't pick that up.

Well, I guess, however you would define it, but where you think that you've got an expense efficiency advantage over the rest of the market in any particular countries or any particular lines of business?

Okay. Sorry, I'm writing that down. So we hear you on the admin expenses. I think what we will do is in September when we present our plans for the next 3 years, then we will give you more detail on the admin expenses by line of business. On expense management, I think what we want to do, and that's very important for this year and for the next plan is to carry on with strong organic growth. And strong organic growth means that you grow volumes.

And if you grow volumes, you have to obviously manage those additional volumes. So obviously, automation, digitalizations, AI will help. So my answer is given the strong ambition that we have in organic growth for top line, it's probably more of a relative game than a cost reduction in absolute terms. That being said, obviously, in places where we wouldn't have that strong organic growth because there is too much -- too large of a price pressure. I'm thinking of XL Re, for instance, there you want to see price decrease. Yes, expense decrease, sorry.

Then on the places where we believe we have strong expense advantage with a good number of countries where we are in quarter 1. That's how we measure the -- our price competitiveness. We compare it to others. And so that would be typically France, which is normal given the size that we have the scale in this market compared to others. But you would have other countries such as Switzerland, you would have Italy, you would have Japan, bearing in mind that we are Tier 2 in Japan, but we compare well. And Germany as well is a place where we've had significant efforts on costs, and we compare well to the others.

The next question is from Thomas Bateman, Mediobanca.

I was just wondering if you could give us a sense of where inflation might be emerging a little bit faster than other areas or where you think inflationary risk from the conflict in Iran could emerge elsewhere. Just interested in the comments you made on solvency and where that could be coming through. And the second question, I was just hoping you could give us an update on how the rollout of your mid-market U.S. commercial business is going.

Thank you, Thomas. So on inflation, just a word on the solvency because you referred to it. On this, it's purely mechanical in the sense that the way it's done, we take into account the inflation curve that you see on the public markets, and that's the input to our model. So irrespective of whether markets are right or wrong, if the inflation curve goes up, that has a negative impact on our solvency because you would project our expenses on the Life side at a higher inflation rate.

Then on the core of your question, which is where we would see inflation emerge faster, I think it has to do with oil and how oil prices spread. At the end of the day, what you see in some industries is that people have trouble producing and because energy is expensive and they'd rather reduce their production than produce and not being able to sell it. So at this point, I think inflation might stop if the crisis stops in the next few days or weeks, but it might also be that it spreads everywhere, not only to plastics or fertilizers because that's immediately dependent on price, but more generally on the fact that when you have to produce, I don't know, spare parts, the price of energy goes up and therefore, you would see price increases there.

So I'm not sure that I would see some specific sectors more affected than others. I think it's more general. I also want to take that opportunity to say that, again, we were not in an inflationary environment at the beginning of this crisis as opposed to '22. We've managed the previous crisis. The current environment is rather supportive in terms of price increases. And if anything, I'm not hoping for it, but that's something that could help a softening market being less soft or becoming a bit harder. And obviously, it has some positive impacts on the -- on interest rates and therefore, on our investment income.

Then on the mid-market in the U.S., last year, we grew that business more than 20%. And so we're happy with that. As you know, it's something that we are starting. So by definition, at the start, the growth is somewhat easy, but we are very happy with those developments. And that's a market which is less cyclical than the large commercial lines one. And therefore, we are confident that we can further grow there.

The next question is from Andrew Crean, Autonomous Research.

Three questions, if I can. Firstly, on health, the premium growth has accelerated on stronger pricing. Could you talk a little bit about what your margin anticipation is from that action. Secondly, there's the potential if this war goes on for a significant travel disruption with lots of flights being canceled and people's holiday plans disrupted. Would that have an impact on you within the Transversal business? And thirdly, given the different rating environment of different areas, are you significantly changing the capital allocation to different divisions? I'm thinking particularly you've made mention of reinsurance and of the U.K. market. Are you actually pulling capital back from these businesses to reallocate elsewhere?

Okay. Thank you, Andrew. So on health, 2 ways to answer your question. The first one is, so you saw the price increases were a bit north of 8%. Typical medical inflation is around 5% to 6%. That gives you an idea of margin increase. The other way to think about it is on the very specific case of Mexico, you know that Mexico in 2025 cost us 90 bps of loss ratio for the whole health business, and we are planning to recover on those 90 bps between this year and potentially next year. So that's how I would answer your question.

On travel, so yes, we do have a travel insurance business in our Transversal segment. I can't remember exactly the percentage is probably 1/3 or 1/4 of our assistance business. I'd say if at some point, there is a significant increase in the crisis and flights are canceled, yes, that would have an impact, but it would be small because we sell policies for a given flight to a given traveler. And therefore, we would change our underwriting immediately. So we might be caught up in -- at a given moment where flights that would be canceled, but that would not be worse than what we had in Q1 precisely when that kind of event occurred. So it wouldn't be material.

On capital allocation, the way we think about it is, obviously, we allocate capital where we have a business that meets our cost of capital. So what we tell our businesses is to get back to profitability at a level that meets our cost of capital and in most of the cases, if not all, that means reducing our local exposure. So that's the way we reduce our allocation to some business. So clearly, XL Re was an example because prices are down, even though you know that our combined ratio in XL Re was around 80% last year, but we want to keep that good level of profitability.

In the U.K., you see some business in Commercial Lines that we believe are written by our competitors at a combined ratio above 100%. We don't want to play that game. So we wouldn't write that business, and that's where you -- that's why you see that our volumes have come down a bit or are stable overall in Europe, but because of the U.K.

The next question is from Fahad Changazi, Kepler Cheuvreux.

I was wondering notwithstanding the updated actuarial financial assumptions you will do at H1, how do you see the new business CSM developing through the year? And if we do take into account FX and markets as where they are now, how do you see CSM ending up from the beginning of the year to the end of the year? And finally, just to get for completeness on Solvency II, could you just isolate and tell us what the impact was from inflation curve and from the increased volatility in Q1.

Okay. So on new business CSM. So as you saw, it was a bit more than 5% coming from Life and slightly negative coming from health. On the Health side, it's mostly due to a product in Japan health with unit-linked that we stopped or significantly diminished. And so you should see that same kind of impact over the rest of the year as we compare to '25. On the Life side, we believe that we have a very strong momentum in terms of sales, and we don't see reasons why it should come down in the next quarters. So PVEP volumes, new business CSM on Life should keep the same kind of growth more or less over the next quarters.

And on CSM itself, we said that we wanted to grow CSM as much as possible above 3%. So that's still the ambition that we have. On Solvency II, I would say inflation must have cost us something like 1 point and volatility on each of equity and interest rates, 1 point as well. So 2 points in total for volatility. And sorry, there's also corporate spreads. So 1 point from spreads, 2 points from volatility, 1 point from inflation.

The next question is from Iain Pearce, BNP Paribas.

It's just a follow-up on the Life business and particularly on the new business margin. If you could just give us a little bit more color on sort of what's driven the decline in the new business margin year-on-year? Is it just the mix effects in the JVs? Or is there anything else to pull out? Do you expect that trend to reverse over the course of the year? And also, if there's any impact we should think about on new business margin from the movements in rates we've seen in the back end of the quarter and since quarter end that could impact new business margins for the rest of the year?

So the decrease in new business margin is primarily due to the 2 joint ventures that we have in China and in Thailand, where business mix has not been as good in Q1 '26 as it was in Q1 '25. And that explains the reason. Now more broadly, when we think about new business contribution, and I put it that way for a reason. First, we focus even more on new business CSM than on new business value because new business CSM has a direct impact on our earnings, and that's why I insisted on the 5% growth that we have on Life new business CSM because we're happy with that number.

More broadly, we want to grow our Life business and our Life earnings. So at the end of the day, if it means that we should slightly reduce our margins because that would allow us to grow volumes more aggressively and therefore, grow profits at the end of the day, that's fine with us. In Life, in general, we meet our cost of capital, and we more than meet it. I mean it's a very, very profitable business. And therefore, we can allow ourselves to have slightly lower margins to get more business and to grow our new business CSM.

The next question is from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.

This is an extraordinary call, Alban. I mean, I know you're always quite open, but you seem even more open than normal. Leading question, the 21st of September, you're still holding some kind of event. Is this the spirit of today's answering questions where you're giving so much granularity. So that's -- I know it's not a real question, but there you go. And then the real question is kind of opposite. Everybody is worried about inflation. I'm more thinking there's a benefit in terms of frequency. Is that what you're seeing?

So on your first comment, Michael, I would say there's nothing to hide. So it's clear that our business is diverse, and it's normal for you to have questions which are very different. And on top of that, we have a volatile environment. So happy to be helpful and answer your questions. On your real question, which was on -- frequency. So at this stage, we don't see yet a benefit in frequency because you would probably need -- and I'm not sure that you would really want it, but a longer-lasting crisis for people to use their cards less. I mean, obviously, you see that on TV and in the news, but we don't see that yet in demand in our numbers, but that might come.

And may I ask slightly different. I'm really sorry. Well, I'm not, but credit, do you remember in that lovely dinner, you said, oh yes, credits actually could be an opportunity. And here, you sounded and you gave this extra disclosure, et cetera. And you said, I think you said you bought some more corporate bonds, et cetera. Did you also buy more credit?

So in Q1, we bought less credit than we had planned for precisely because the market was good on public credit. And I should say, we are very selective on our private credit investments. And at that point in time, I would say that we're selective to a point when the market, which is very dependent on M&A because the credit that you're buying are very, very often linked to M&A transactions, and you have fewer M&A transactions in Q1 also because of the crisis.

So all that put together, it means that we -- it's more difficult to source private credit at our level of requirement than it was to do that for public credit given the markets we had. But the window on public credit closed. And as you saw, corporate spreads tightened and went back to where they were at the beginning of the year.

The next question is from William Hawkins, KBW.

Very sorry to come back, but if I don't ask now, you'll never tell me. Can you tell me what the numerator and denominator was of the solvency ratio, please?

So yes, on the EOF, the numerator, it went down from EUR 56.4 billion to EUR 53.7 billion and the end of the grandfathering had an impact of minus EUR 2.4 billion. And the denominator went up slightly from EUR 25.2 billion to EUR 25.5 billion.

The next question is from Pierre Chedeville at CIC Market Solutions.

Two questions from my side. First, could you tell us the development of Nobis, your acquisition in Italy. Are you still observing very high growth there? And second question, you did not mention or maybe I missed it, the impact of dollar on Q1? And how do you see it evolve in next quarters?

So on Nobis, I would say there's not much to report, it's developing according to our plan, and we're happy. I think in Italy, the acquisition, which is more material and that's making a real difference is Prima. And Prima is developing extremely well because in the first quarter, premiums are -- so we don't book premiums.

Sorry, I wanted to talk about Prima, sorry.

No, no, that's okay. And so Prima grew by 30% in the first quarter. So we are very happy with the developments. On the USD, so there are 2 ways to do different things to think about. First, the dollar itself on average in Q1, it was 1.17. And therefore, it's very different from Q1 '25, but not very different from the full year 2025, where it ended at 1.17. So you see some ups and downs, but it's not material. And what we do is that we have very slightly opened, but very, very slightly opened our exposure to the U.S. dollar because in case of crisis, the U.S. dollar strengthens, and we want to take advantage of that. But we're talking a very, very limited amount.

And then when we talk about earnings, you know that we don't hedge our earnings and therefore, whatever change in the U.S. dollar we have, positive or negative, would impact positively or negatively XL's and Hong Kong's earnings once translated in euro.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is a follow-up from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.

Private equity, I think is that a topic still where you're kind of worried about -- not worried is the wrong word, but where the volumes are weak and so you have to kind of think, well, maybe it will take a longer time to get out to get the returns.

So to be simple, nothing has changed since last year. What -- you know that we plan to progressively reduce our exposure to private equity in our asset allocation, but very progressively over the next 3 to 4 years. And in terms of getting returns and getting cash out of private equity, what we do is obviously take the distribution, the normal distribution from the funds, but we've also done some secondary transactions last year and the year before. We had a very good practice that we created at AXA IM and that now with BNP Paribas Asset Management that helps us structure those secondary transactions. So one way or the other, we deal with that, and we are not concerned.

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much for joining our call. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to AXA Investor Relations. Have a good day. Bye.

Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.

[Interpreted]

Dear shareholders, dear friends, thank you for your loyalty and your presence. First of all, I would like to say that we are sorry for the slight order that we are all suffering from and very quickly, hopefully, will vanish. Exceptionally, you are coming in large numbers. I'm very happy about this. It's really a great pleasure to be with you again for this new AXA combined general meeting.

Our meeting this year is of special importance in various ways. First of all, 2025 has seen record earnings for the group. And this, whilst our environment has been deteriorating and the overall risk level sharply has increased in the last few years, and we'll come back to that.

Our meeting is significant as well because your Board of Directors, which is attending today, is suggesting that we renew for 4 additional years, the term of Thomas Buberl. As you know, Thomas has been spearheading the group for 10 years. Spurred by him, AXA has seen a major transformation. Our group today is involved in a growth phase based on sustained performance. The proposal to renew Thomas' term is part of this context and does reflect the Board's decision to want him continue the action that he has been kicking in with quite some success.

Finally, you will recall that last year, we had celebrated the 40 years of AXA. We had then reminded you how Claude [indiscernible] had turned a simple mutual enormity initially, turned it into a global insurance leader since November 1, Claude left us. His death spurred great emotion within the group as well as among all those who have met him during his long career. The countless tributes given to him have highlighted both the great industrial manager. He was the first turn the company a place of social integration.

Today, Claude Bard's vision continues to inspire deeply our group. This is the reason why we wanted to share with you at the start of this general meeting, a short video outlining the great entrepreneurial adventure that Claude Bard embodied.

[Presentation]

Following this moving tribute to Claude, we will now dive into the heart of this general meeting. For this key moment of Access Life, I'm surrounded by Thomas Buberl, the CEO; and Guillaume in charge of finance, strategy, risk, underwriting and technology. We are also surrounded here with the members of the Board of Directors who are sitting in the front row. And I'd like to take this moment to thank them very warmly for their unfailing commitment and the active contribution to the work of our Board this year again.

The general meeting is a significant moment because it's an opportunity to be back together, enables the leaders to spell out their strategy and the Board report of its work and shareholders to ask the questions which are dear to their hearts. Again, I would like to underline the important decisions that you will be urged to take for the general meeting and for the governance of the group. First of all, as I was saying, we will be proposed this year to renew the term of Thomas Buberl as a Director for 4 years. The Board has already announced its intention to renew Thomas in his role as a CEO, subject to your approval with regard to his term as a director.

The proposal to renew Thomas's term also comes along with a change in the Board with a proposal to appoint Filomnaenama as a Director. Gillaume F will present in further details this proposal. Right now, I'd like to say that Filomnaenama, who is Swiss and Italian has a professional track record that is remarkable. In the insurance business, she will strengthen the experience and the expertise collectively of the Board. It is very important just when we are facing a rapid transformation of our environment and where we must face new challenges, especially regarding artificial intelligence, which will deeply transform our business and our way of working. We will now proceed with the formalities before opening the session and form a registration board. There are none.

So we are a public company because we have people who are not shareholders. And also, let me point out that this will be broadcast live and recorded on our website, axa.com. This Annual General Meeting is being held today on first call. It was convened in accordance with legal provisions by notice of meeting published on the 27th of February in the [indiscernible] by a notice of meeting published in the same Bulten as well as in the French legal gazette Lizafaren on the same day.

I've just been informed that the meeting is duly convened in both its ordinary and extraordinary form. Let me read the provisional quorum, which I will refine later on in the afternoon. [ 1,444,411 ] shares are represented today, and these shares represent 71.20% of the votes, which gives us a quorum of 72.58%. So this is an excellent quorum. So I can now hereby declare a combined general meeting open and shall proceed to appoint the committee.

I will act as Chairman in my capacity as the Chairman of the Board, I shall call as scrutiners the 2 shareholders present who hold in their own right or as proxies, the greatest number of votes. They are the AXA Assurance Michel represented by Mr. Philippe Biran, Director of this company, duly authorized and AXA Assurance V. Mutel represented by Mrs. Sophie [indiscernible] ,also Director of that company, duly authorized. I thank you, Philippe and Sophie, for having accepted these roles. And being with us throughout the session.

So let's point as Secretary of [indiscernible] sitting next to me, this being formed now we will be able to move forward. I inform the meeting of the President of Met court Commissioner appointed at the request of the company, who will be responsible for making sure the meeting abides by legal rules. The statutory auditors who have been convened in accordance by the law by registered letter are Mr. -- they represent KPMG SA.

Lastly, and this will end these legal formalities. I have available all the legal documents available to the meeting. I would like to add that those shareholders who so requested have received the documents and information required by law and have been able to inspect these at the company's headquarter or the company's website within the framework required by the regulations. As I said, we are convening today this combined annual meeting to ask you to vote on 21 ordinary resolutions.

Let's dispense with the reading of the agenda for this meeting. You may consult the simplified agenda, which appears on the screen behind me. I also propose that we dispense with the reading of the Board of Directors' reports, which have been made available to you under the conditions laid out by law. This will give us more time for the presentation and above all, to answer your questions. I'd like also to point out that as at previous meetings, we will be using electronic voting, the details of which will be explained to you before the vote on the resolutions.

So now let's move to the next phase, which will be unfolding with several sequences. First of all, the presentation of our strategic outlook by Thomas Buberl, followed by the presentation of our KPIs by -- with Guillaume [indiscernible] After that, we'll have a roundtable with several experts in the group on the topic, how to ensure the future. The third sequence will be dedicated to the governance and the questions of remuneration of our senior executives with Guillaume Borie presenting the Chair of the Appointments Remuneration Committee and then we'll be coming the moment for your questions and exchanges with the floor before we move to the voting of the resolutions.

To start, let me turn it over to Thomas for the presentation of our strategic outlook.

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone. I'm delighted to be back with you for this new general meeting. Before I share with you the group's strategic prospects, I would like to pay a tribute to Claude [indiscernible] AXA's founder. His death in November last was a moment of deep sadness for our group, driven by a very strong vision as an insurer serving societal progress. His track record tells us a great entrepreneurial adventure, which is AXA. We were deeply moved by all the tribute coming from all the employees around the globe, but also from the political and economic arenas.

For AXA, he has paved the way for this unique way, which continues to be a deep inspiration even today our decisions. He's being -- he was so demanding. He had a sense of the collective and his vision about progress remains our compass to make sure that AXA is successful in an uncertain world, true to his -- our mission as a protector and contributing to human progress. By paying a tribute to Claude [indiscernible] we are reminding ourselves where we come from to give some meaning to our action and to our current mission.

So now I would like to come back to the performance of the group in 2025. This performance has given us the means to stick to our commitments, invest and pave the way for the future. For the second year of the implementation of our strategic plan called Unlock the Future, we have recorded record earnings. Such performance illustrates the relevance of our strategy chiefly based on organic growth. Such growth -- we owe it to the diversity of our distribution channels, the professionalism of our distributors and the quality of our offers and services, which allow us to fulfill the needs of our clients and even conquer new ones. In a world that is more volatile where climate-related risks and geopolitical risks and technological risk and social risk are increasing.

The role of insurance is more than ever essential to stabilize the major imbalances of our societies. I will now spell out our major financial indicators. As I said, we -- in 2025, our performances were at a record level in every line of business. Our premiums reached EUR 116 billion, up by 6% versus 2024. Such organic growth accounts partly for a price effect, but it's also accounted for by a sharp -- strong commercial momentum, which enables us to increase the number of clients and contracts in a large number of our markets.

In 2025, in the single segment of the retail business, we won EUR 1.6 billion new contracts throughout the world. Such growth was also profitable. Our underlying earnings are also increasing by 6% and even by 9%, excluding AXA Investment Managers. Such performance reflects our technical excellence, the diversification of our risk portfolios as well as a very strict tariff discipline.

Our underlying earnings per share is climbing by 8% in the upper range in terms of target. Finally, our balance sheet is very solid with a Solvency II rate at 224%, which is up by 9 points versus the end of 2025. Given these very good results, the Board of Directors proposes to the shareholders a dividend of EUR 2.32 per share, which is up by 8% relative to last year. And it has approved a new buyback program for an amount maximum of EUR 1.25 billion, which started on March 2.

The excellent performance is -- I mean, AXA is well positioned to reach the upper range of the goals of our plan unlock the future. Such success is mainly due to our model, which is both very well balanced and highly diversified. This is the outcome of the transformation, which was kicked in by AXA for over 10 years now. Our group from now on is refocused on the heart of our business, which is the insurance business and has available very strong positions on our strategic market.

This model enables us to be relevant while being competitive with higher demand for protection from the market. The emergence of new risks generates new needs for protection. And I have in mind the emergence of new technology, autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity as well as energy transition. The aging of global population has been boosting demand for savings, pension and health products and solutions.

Finally, the needs in insurance of low-income individuals are also important demands, and we meet these demands by way of our inclusive insurance portfolio. AXA today is very well positioned to meet all of these needs for protection. Let us have a few examples, which demonstrate that we are covering all of the needs of our policyholders, and I'm proud to share them with you. We are the leading insurers in commercial lines, covering large corporations as well as midsized companies, which play a key role in our economic fabric. We have been offering more and more appropriate products to micro entrepreneurs via our inclusive insurance solutions. And we also are very well positioned on the segments of protection and employee benefits, which has been developing strongly.

One of our values has been boldness. The history and great success of AXA for the last 40 years have always been supported by a very strong entrepreneurial culture and by a capacity to onboard new technology into our business operations. I would like to share 2 examples. The first is the acquisition of Prima, an Italian-based insurtech. This was a bit less than a year ago. The direct insurance solutions offered by Prima as an addition to our network of brokers, tied agents and banking partners as is the case already with the direct insurance business in France. It makes it possible for us to reach out to new clients, including the younger generations.

And finally, it strengthens our distribution capability in Europe, thanks to a next-generation technology platform that will be gradually rolling out across several units and entities of the group. We believe in the complementary fit of our distribution channels. In parallel to this acquisition, we continue to invest broadly into our networks in the field. For example, 430 new tied agents were installed in France in 2025. The second example I want to share with you is our artificial intelligence strategy. We're convinced that AI will transform the insurance industry while opening up lots of new opportunities. AI will help us better price risks, help us improve quality of service and customer experience. It also helps us to accelerate our technology development. In France, already more than 12,000 tied agents have been using Smart in AXA solutions, which is an information search tool, which was developed by AXA and which is based on generative AI. In order to drive and onboard our employees, and to me, it is the most interesting benefit of AI, we have been massively investing into their training and development.

By in our strategy and the trust they grant to adopting new tool will be critical in our future success. And this has been working extremely well. An internal survey has showed that 70% of our employees are optimistic as to the gains and efficiencies and upside provided by AI. We are now entering a more operational phase of artificial intelligence. It will help us accelerate its use where this technology can generate added value. And I believe that this is the case in underwriting and in claims management. We will tell you more about it when we disclose our strategic plan in September 2026.

Today, an insurance company uses on average 40 variables to underwrite a motor insurance policy. In the future, thanks to AI, we'll be able to review 400 such variables, which will refine significantly our selection and our pricing. These robust solutions and this ability to innovate are only relevant if they benefit the greater number. Ever since it was founded, AXA has always strived to share the value generated by its operations. We have paid out close to EUR 50 billion in compensation to our customers last year. Every year, we've been investing more than EUR 40 billion in the economy.

Last year, we have paid EUR 13 billion in corporate tax local and regional taxes as well as payroll taxes and charges, including 37% in France. For our employees, we have paid out EUR 7 billion in salaries and bonuses. This is a key to the success of our group. And of course, our shareholders are a key driver in AXA Group's financial stability ranking first among them is the AXA Mutual Companies. And more than 36% of our employees are shareholders of the AXA Group.

Finally, we also contribute to climate transition. In 2025, we invested EUR 6.4 billion to accelerate climate transition. In 2025, we also launched an ambitious sponsoring initiative with the AXA Fund for human progress. This fund has been spending EUR 60 million a year in impactful projects around 4 key pillars for us: heritage, nature, science and inclusion. The fund has been grouping together and unifying and working with NGOs, institutional partners, academic and cultural partners around a same shared vision, which is to contribute to a more resilient and more inclusive future. Because at the end of the day, our business draws on and relies on social bonding. Without any collective trust and without social cohesion, no insurance system can last long.

As you know, our strategic plan will come to an end at the end of this year in 2026. Our next strategic cycle will cover 2027, 2029, and we already are preparing for it. The future success of AXA builds upon 4 areas. First, making artificial intelligence, a key driver for efficiency and effectiveness and for improving customer experience. Number two, we need to strengthen our excellence and our agility in a fast-changing environment. Number three, we need to direct more capital towards growth opportunities, which are the most generative of value.

Number four, we want to strengthen our robustness and our resilience while maintaining balanced diversification and a very solid balance sheet. Before I turn over to Guillaume Borie, who will review the performance results of the group in more detail, I suggest we watch a short video, which reviews some of our initiatives relative to Artificial Intelligence. Dear shareholders, I thank you for your attention.

[Presentation]

Thomas, for your presentation. I would like to turn over now to Guillaume B, who will be reviewing performance results for fiscal 2025.

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone. Dear shareholders, I'm delighted to be with you this afternoon for the first time in my new role and to review in some detail the financial and nonfinancial performance for fiscal year 2025, which Thomas Buberl has mentioned as being very robust for the second year into our strategic plan unlock the future, we achieved a record performance with respect to our revenue, reaching EUR 116 billion, up 6% over 2024. This is an increase of some EUR 13 billion for our revenue over just 2 years, i.e., right from the beginning of our strategic plan. You have here the tangible translation of our organic growth target set by Thomas Buberl, which is a target we have been attaining, thanks to the hard work and commitment of our teams, our distribution channels and the trust of our customer. In 2025, you can see that all of our business lines contributed to this good positive sales momentum.

In P&C, revenues reached EUR 58 billion, up 5%, driven by both rising volumes and positive price effect. The life insurance business has performed extremely well with revenues reaching EUR 35.5 billion, up 9%, confirming that AXA is back in the strategic health in the strategic business for the group. And finally, the health insurance business reached EUR 19 billion, up 5%, being driven by good sales development across all of our geographies.

Fundamentally, this sustained growth has been posted in great conditions of profitability as shows the operating income of EUR 8.4 billion, up 6%, not including AXA IM, i.e., only on the insurance business of the group, the underlying earnings grew by 9% in fiscal 2025, up 9% is the underlying -- the intrinsic underlying performance of the group, which is especially brisk and robust, and I will review this more in detail with P&C and health insurance.

In P&C, I told you EUR 58 billion in revenue, some EUR 6 billion in underlying earnings after tax and 3 customer segments, which are of similar sizes. So retail lines, mid-market insurance and business to manage large risk for corporations under AXA XL. So the P&C business is close to a perfect copy in 2025. All of our indicators have improved, lower loss ratio, lower overhead expenses, thanks to increased operating efficiency and fewer releases of provisions.

These great results are the result of a strong discipline in execution by the team with constant focus and attention on technical excellence, which is a critical factor to help serve and support our customers day out. And technical excellence has been extremely strong for the last 2 years on the back of increased technology solutions on the back of AI. This excellent performance is the result also of a growth strategy that we've been adapting to the reality of each of the customer segments we are targeting.

So for retail lines and for mid-market insurance, our margins are reaching unprecedented levels among the best in the industry, enabling us to be in a winning mode, and we are aiming at gaining market share across all of our geographies, thanks to competitive offerings, which meet the needs of our customers and clients. With respect to protecting insurance coverage to large corporations and mid-market companies, especially with AXA XL, we've been protecting very high-level margins in a fiercely competitive market while engaging in a selective growth strategy, especially thanks to the sources of growth we are tapping into to cover the new risk Thomas Buberl mentioned, i.e., energy transitioning, cybersecurity risks and large technology project coverage. Now back to our life and health insurance. You can see that the underlying earnings was up 7% to EUR 3.5 billion.

And here again, you have a balanced contribution by our 3 business lines: protection, health and savings and retirement. In health insurance, we are focusing our efforts on our ability to innovate in order to better serve and support clients in their health journeys. This had us set up health centers and beefing up our services to support patients. In protection insurance, we have a great commercial momentum, especially in Japan and in Switzerland, thanks to solutions, which combine protection and savings and retirement products. And in savings and pension, net inflows in 2025 were up sharply, up EUR 5.4 billion in net inflows with attractive margin levels with higher volumes with reevaluated assets we manage on the part of our clients, especially thanks to good market performance.

On the savings business, we signed a partnership -- strategic partnership with BNP Paribas Asset Management, which gives us scale and more competitiveness in our offerings and will help us gain new business while improving the return on investments for our existing clients. By way of conclusion, I would like to mention an important fact, which translates how the group has repositioned under the involves of our CEO for the last 10 years. Excellent performance posted in 2025 has been the result of positive contributions by all of our geographies and of all of our business lines without any exception.

In other words, all of our business lines are going full out ever from our AXA XL covering large corporations, including our Asian, African, Japanese, South American and obviously, European operations. We now have an insurance platform, which is robust, which is resolutely oriented towards profitable growth. And by way of conclusion, knowing that today we are in Paris, I would like to underline the great performance in our domestic market, i.e., France, with growth in revenues of 6% and growth of the underlying earnings of 7%.

So this brings me to give you an update on the strategic plan called Unlock the Future. 2026, i.e., this year will be the last year of this plan. And the 3-year targets and goals you have here up on the screen. As you may see in the second column, you can see the excellent underlying and operating performance in 2025. And this brings us to the upper end of the bracket of our targets across each of our 3 KPIs. We are fully in line with our guidance and with our road map. Also, we have had excellent financial robustness. As Thomas Buberl said, our solvency ratio stands at a very high level, much above 200%.

Remember that in the certain time we are operating under and our clients are challenging us day in, day out on this, this financial robustness is a key asset to support and serve our clients and to protect our shareholders. On the strength and on the back of this robustness and good performance, we believe we are very well positioned to reach the upper end of our bracket in our underlying earnings per share with a growth target of 6% to 8%. And we believe that in 2026, across all of the plan, 2024, '26, we'll be reaching the upper end of this target bracket.

Now this positions us very favorably into the next planning cycle by reaffirming our goal to pursue sustainable growth, which will help us thrive in the future, thanks to 2 key levers at the heart of our next plan, organic development and growth in our business in a context where the needs of our customers and clients with respect to protection will be growing. And number two, we'll be accelerating our technology transformation, thanks to AI. A few more things on our shareholder return policy, excellent performance by our group leads us to pursue our attractive payout policy. This is a sign of trust, and we thank you for your trust. As you know, we commit to paying out 75% of underlying earnings per share, including 60% in dividend with a dividend payout at least equal to that of last year and 15% in the form of share buyback.

Our key financial discipline and the operating performance of our business operations have led the directors in line with this policy and as Thomas Buberl, mentioned earlier, to offer a dividend of EUR 2.32, up 10%, and you'll have to vote on this in a few minutes. Now a few more words on the Access stock in a troubled time due to specific tension in France. We've perceived increased risk by international investors for France, higher risks and by pressure in the market, since the Middle East conflict broke out. The AXA stock has held well and the growth of our stock has been 131%, including reinvested dividend. And we are outperforming CAC 40, Eurosol 50 and the stocks insurance, which is the insurance benchmark. The very fine development is a result of our financial performance, which I've just mentioned as well as our long-term orientation, including our nonfinancial performance.

By way of conclusion, I will review this nonfinancial performance. You may know that in 2021, we launched the so-called AXA for Progress Index around the strong belief of ours, which was the need to seamlessly report on our performance with respect to ESG commitments. This commitment is part and parcel of the DNA of AXA Group ever since it was founded. We are showing you the 7 indicators we are tracking in the context of this ESG index around our 3 levers: our insurance business, our investor business and our employer activity.

Our core business being insurance operations. As Thomas Mul said, the offerings we have for our clients in order to help them mitigate climate change accounted for some EUR 5 billion in premiums, the target being EUR cumulative billion over '24, '26. These offerings are very tangible, enabling our clients to cover new types of businesses related to biodiversity protection, biodiversity and circular economy. Our second category is that of investor. I won't go back in detail on this because our CEO mentioned it.

Finally, we are taking action as a responsible employer and as a responsible company, a civic-minded company in 2025, we launched a training and development program to adapt to climate change for all of our employees. And in 1 year's time, some 50,000 employees of ours have already undergone training, the target being 80,000 employees by the end of 2026. Again, remember that AXA made very strong commitments with respect to how it should contribute to decarbonizing its insurance and its investor operations as an insurer ourselves, knowing that our emissions are very low given our business operations. These commitments are described in our various reports, and we're in line with reaching them a few years before our targets.

This finalizes my review of the financial and nonfinancial performance. Thank you for your attention. Thank you.

[Interpreted]

Thank you, Guillaume, for the clear presentation. I suggest now that we view a short video carried out by the forward-looking teams of AXA. We will be followed with an exchange with the experts of the company with [indiscernible] the general moderating on the topic how to ensure the future.

[Presentation]

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone. We've just viewed a vision that led us to 2 different futures, which have one common point. They are not that far away in reality, these scenarios, it's not sci-fi. They already exist in a fragmented way. What the film is telling us is that we have entered into a new era where they are in the risk of interconnectedness, economic, technological, climate risk, geographic, social risk, which are not added up but interact together, get stronger and make the future more uncertain than ever.

In this context, one central question arises, how can we continue to ensure the future when the future itself is becoming uncertain. And that's the role of AXA today to anticipate, prevent, support the transitions and contribute to stabilize the imbalances of the society. I'm a journalist moderator, I'm delighted to moderate this roundtable with 4 guest speakers, which provide an additional look. Francois G in charge of Risk; Matienaa, Technology and AI Director; Carmila, Secretary in charge of Human Resource and Compliance; and also Mathieu Godard, Director of General ASA France.

So how -- what about this risk and their transformation, Francois, first of all, in the face of the intensification of climate upheavals, economic shocks and the emergence of this new risk, what today makes the traditional insurance models inadequate?

[Interpreted]

Hello, Elena. Hello, everyone. We've seen this in the film. Risks are increasingly interconnected and the intensity of risk is also on the rise. And the frequency is gaining momentum all in our environment, we know people who have been faced with a natural event. When such a natural event has an impact on a farming area, industrial area, we can understand the consequences it can have, especially on the production line, potential prices also generate potentially economic, social impacts. And we've seen also the cost of [indiscernible] cats is increasing year after year and the frequency is also accelerating. Eliiona, when you were talking about these traditional insurance models, you're referring to these models, which essentially are based on 2 assumptions. First of all, the future will be about similar to the past and the mutualization of losses will be enough or adequate. In other words, regrouping losses means that losses suffered by a few policyholders will be borne by all the policyholders.

With what we discussed and seen in the film, all the losses are becoming greater, and we understand that mutualizing these losses on their own is not sufficient enough and which amounts -- which accounts for the limits of traditional models. So concretely, how is AXA taking forward its management of risk to detect earlier the new risk and continue to ensure what is important for its clients?

[Interpreted]

Absolutely. This is the starting point. We always start from the need of our clients. The aim is to support clients to reduce the impact of risk. So as an insurer to reduce such impact of risk, we don't have a magical want. We are part -- we look at the world as it is, and we are part of it, but we have given and we underwrite insurance contracts in over 50 countries. And based on these data, our experts have rolled out the technology among which artificial intelligence. In what way is it helpful and in what way is it helpful for our clients with such technologies and the data. This allows us to refine each time further the understanding of risk. And when you better understand risk, it is the key to adapt to the mutualization of losses, the risk prevention. It's when you understand risk that you can identify what are these risk drivers that will generate the highest level of losses and damage and provide the information through customer prevention by explaining by acting on this area of risk, we can reduce collectively the impact.

So working towards prevention together beyond loss prevention, thanks to data and new technologies that can help us move forward into the future.

[Interpreted]

Thank you very much, Francois. And now we can move on to you, Mathieu, because in order to continue to ensure you need to understand and anticipate and for this technology, of course, plays a key role. So Mathieu, you are on the front line in terms of AI and technological challenges in the scenario of the film technology, in particular, plays a major role. But in what are these tools changing concretely the way AXA grass the risks and their interconnectedness.

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone.

Thank you, Elena.

Yes, I think it's very clear today. The major risk today that we are facing, whether climate-related risk, cyber risk or about geopolitical instability are not isolated events. They are gaining ground. They are feeding each other. They are spreading around and the traditional models do not allow to report adequately. So we need to invent a new approach. And this is where AI kicks in because it allows us to have access to a whole new dimension of data, both in terms of volume and typology and AI will allow us to make understandable and usable gigantic masses of unstructured data, such photos or satellite [indiscernible] or recordings or text. All of this makes up a huge mass of information, and it's now possible to draw upon it for this, we have available huge catalyst power, which allow us to include into our models all this information, the essence of the conclusions we can derive from these multiple observations.

And today, this is what we've been doing with our tools. It allows us to obtain an equal performance such as look at correlations between different risk scenarios. In the past, it would take us several weeks. And today, we're able to operate nearly in real time. And it's very important because it means that we are developing a much more accurate risk understanding. We can, therefore, have more relevant prices that are even fairer and open the door to prevention in a very creative as alluded to by Francois.

Yes, could you tell us other concrete examples so that we can understand AI intervenes in the understanding of risk and even customer experience. Let me -- there's a tool that we saw early on in the film, which is discipline White Fire, which is -- tries to model forest-related fires. The film was alluding to Los Angeles fires. Europe, unfortunately, was also struck in 2025, that's 1 billion hectares of forest that vanished. It's a doubling compared to the trend that we had been seeing up until then. And traditionally, the way that risk was modeled was simply static. And today, thanks to AI, we are able to track about 20 parameters even in real time so that we can really foresee changes. We rely on the vegetation, the directional strength of the wind to be able to give to our clients on their relevant sites up to 72 hours in advance advice.

So our clients, therefore, can take preventative actions in order to reduce the impact of such events. Let me also talk about client experience because in that case, we see major benefits, thanks to AI. Smart AXA fulfills such demand up until recently for our sales forces, responding to a request from customers meant finding a piece of information related to the client then navigate in very complex in one click now, you can mobilize one virtual assistant based on an AI engine and which in a few seconds, collect information that is necessary to ring-fence the need of a client and then check what is present in the documentary basis to propose an answer, for example, to request for a cover and then link this a piece of advice, the explanation that could be required by a client.

This means that for our sales forces, it's a huge time gain, and therefore, they can spend more time in listening to the needs of the clients. And for the clients, it means, of course, to have a faster reply in return. So we have -- we are well beyond experimenting today. It's working at scale for P&C clients. 12,000 clients use it, 1,500 requests come every day are processed that way. And therefore, it's -- these tools already have a very positive effect among our clients, and there are still many more things that we can do. with that.

[Interpreted]

Thank you, Mathieu, for having shed light on the role of technology, especially AI tools. But technology on its own is not enough to transform a group such as AXA. You also know to bring on board the men and women that make it Karim today, that's 150,000 employees and more in the world. How can you mobilize an organization of such group around these societal challenge, client inclusion, protecting the most vulnerable ones.

[Interpreted]

Thank you, Elen. Good afternoon, everyone. So we have 150,000 employees and agents, and that commitment has 2 routes. First one is the essence of our business, which is about protection. The second one -- it is a unique DNA that has been outlined since the beginning of the session, especially with this great film that outlines the heritage of Claude BA in that film, there was a sentence of this quotation that we keep repeating in our company, which is there's no prosperous company without solidarity.

So that heritage which we strive to make concrete in our daily actions and also transmit to the generation of employees who are joining us. That commitment is concrete is, first of all, in our business line, having charged the claims colleagues, people who are agents on the ground because they are the ones who are close to the companies and families especially in moments that matter. This commitment is also coming through solidarity actions. And this year, we're celebrating the 35 years of AXAtuca. We had 56% last year who were involved in volunteering around the world in France, volunteering work. We work with 320 societies association. We have about 1,000 actions on our territory.

Our conviction is that we need to understand. So we invest a lot in the training of our people, especially regarding the climate Guillaume mentioned it as from 2021, we were the first company with AXA Climate to certify all our employees regarding climate.

And lastly, the commitment is who we are as employer. We are driven by social and societal innovation values. And wherever we are as an employee, we have a responsibility on jobs, on diversity, on equal opportunities. And this is also the footprint we are leading through our role as an employer. And Karima, to come back to the internal commitment, how does it reflect in the offers for our clients such as AXA Essential, which aims to have a more inclusive and accessible insurance program.

As Thomas said, our offer is called AXA Essential that we have been developing for several years. And this offer is aimed for low-income families. When we say this, who is involved when we look in emerging markets in Africa and Asia and South America, we have 675 million people who may not have access to insurance in Europe, we have 1 person out of 4 who has low income like retired people or families with one single parent or small companies. And there, we need to offer protection.

Our vision is no one should be stopped from obtaining insurance for questions related to financial resources. This is why we develop AXA Essential. We have reworked our products, have looked very closely our distribution networks. If I may share a few examples in Spain, we have a partnership with the Corus postal company, we distribute in Spain through the post health-related products across Spain, in France, mature with your team, you develop an offer, which is called ante for my community. So we also work with boroughs, municipalities about 2,000 -- of less than 1,000 to distribute health products, especially among the elderly people. And in Nigeria, in Africa, where I was several weeks ago, we developed health products distributed through pharmacies. It gives -- shows you all the diversity of these offers, which involve today over 20 million people around the world. And I'd like to take advantages to thank all the teams who are driving such innovation concretely in the entities and all my colleagues at the management committee who are in this room who also are keen to develop this offer for the coming years.

[Interpreted]

Thank you very much, Carima. Yes, we've seen the importance of understanding the risk and mobilizing the teams, but there's another key lever which to act as close as possible to the ground. And Matthew, I'm now turning towards you, Karima mentioned this several years ago. In what way this -- through your networks and your agents and new partners actions? Is it a strength when you are very close to the ground, to the territories?

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone.

Yes, we mentioned it since the very beginning of this session. Risks are more complex, are shifting, are increasing. And Francois was explaining very well when she said that mutualization may sometimes hit its limits. So therefore, we need to take it a step further, which means what push further prevention and protection. And what we -- as a quality, we can combine the power of calculus mentioned by Mathieu, our expertise with a local routing and territory presence, which is unique with over 3,000 tied agents present in all our territories, which are rooted locally and who know intimately their clients.

And so they are in a position to provide the right protection-related advice because everyone can understand that the risk in one region is different, the same risk to what you faced in the south of France in terms of climate. So it's a major quality that we are implementing each day so that we can provide a presence, a piece of advice that is as customized as possible. Precisely, any examples that you could share with us?

[Interpreted]

Well, this new prevention protection frontier must be unfolded very practically. Let me take 2 topics. First of all, the climate topic. It is dealt with retail clients with a mechanism called Clima, which is mainly 7 million text sent last year to our clients to prevent them about the occurrence of a nat cat and to indicate a number of pragmatic prevention preventative advice. We will supplement it this year in terms of health stones by inviting car drivers to put their cars in a protective shed and by refunding the cost and also making available through over 200 tied agents an anti-flood kit. In the case of companies beyond the 2,000 visits that our protection engineers make each year, we've just launched a new initiative, which is called [indiscernible] whose goal is to exchange with company owners to identify together the weaknesses his or her companies may be subject to and more importantly, provide an action plan because the resilience of a company is not reacting afterwards, but prepare yourselves to the occurrence.

We contribute also in boroughs and communities with [ Marcominoion ], which is a mechanism where over 300 mayors were supported by our prevention tax teams to put together a safety plan that a mayor has to put together. This is a way for us to further protect 1 million French people. And then -- we go beyond this through philanthropic actions. We have a partnership with Lavigard de France. You all know that maintenance of rivers and so on is very important, and we contribute there. Now regarding social protection. In this regard, we are putting forward new initiatives. We have an app called Mo Sante Angel, which allows our policyholders to obtain preventative pieces of our device with a topic which is emerging strongly, which is mental health that Matthieu also was talking about data first. It's important to be able today to share with the company owner data around absenteeism, which is a growing issue and be able to work towards the well-being of company employees.

Next with the HR managers. This is an initiative which is gaining ground tremendously currently. And as I said before, prevention in terms of prevention, well, there are initiatives which are numerous, but our major challenge is to ensure that French people and our policyholders move to action and act. And we have a special role in this case, to the expertise that we can make available for society at large through the future risks report, in particular, but also through specific studies such as a data scope that enables us to share about the trends of absentees, but also about the awakening of consciousness. This is the role that [indiscernible] plays with Compass on road risk, and we go around tiny houses to make sure we create awareness among young people who support school children, 5 million soon in primary schools together with police to awaken them to the risk of the Internet.

So we act as experts. We awaken consciousness, but also in social public and with public authorities, we shed light also for the good health of the nat cat regime, which is very precious for our company. So very concrete. This is how at AXA France. We put life into this very important issue, which is prevention.

[Interpreted]

Thank you, Mathieu. Yes, we can see through all your answers that the role of an insurer is changing dramatically. It's not only about preparing but anticipating and even transforming oneself to wrap up in one sentence according to you, what is the role of AXA to ensure this -- to impact the risk for our clients by adding prevention to the mutualization of losses. Mathieu? -- to ensure -- to integrate technological innovation responsibly to protect what matters the most when it matters the most, Karima, innovate, innovate, innovate and build partnerships that have more impact. And you, Matthew, I urge you to move to action and each of you in this room, if you could put in place as from next week, a first preventative action, it would be great. Thanks to all 4 of you. What we take away is that these futures that we saw are not written in advance, but force you to adjust your models, invest in technology and AI responsibly, make sure that you commit -- you have the commitment of the employees and reinforce also things on the ground.

And maybe this is what it is to ensure the future, give companies, societies, clients the way to remain resilient in a changing world. Thanks to all 4 of you. I thank you all for this a very exciting discussion that puts in light the prospects for the 2030 scenarios individual. I will now ask Guillaume Bury, who is the Chairman of the Remuneration and Governance and Sustainability Committee to present the changes when it comes to the governance of our company and the remuneration policy of its senior executives. Guillaume, over to you.

[Interpreted]

Hello, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, in my capacity as Chair of the Compensation, Governance and Sustainability Committee, it is my pleasure to review the key facts and aspects of the Board report on corporate governance. I suggest we start by looking at the current membership of the Board of Directors of AXA Group, and you have it up on the screen. As the previous years, the Board reached all its targets and goals with respect to diversity, with respect to gender balance, the proportion of independent directors, seniority, age, complementary fit in skills and expertise and experience as represented on that Board. Since the prior shareholders' meeting, one change deserves being noted following Isabelle Hudson leaving the Board, the Board decided that Ewout Timbergen should be appointed Chair of the Audit Committee to replace Isabelle Hudson.

The Board considered that the experience, expertise as a Finance Director, his ESG skill, his strategic vision in digital transformation and the way AI is being used and his knowledge of the insurance industry will be key skills and expertise for chairing the Audit Committee now. Connected with Isabelle Hudson leaving, the directors has wanted to beef up the insurance expertise inside the Board. In this prospect, it is suggested that Filomena Colachrella be appointed to sit on this Board. She devoted most of her career in the insurance and health industry. And I will mention Filomena again in a few minutes. Now let us look at the suggested changes in the membership of the Board. As you can see here, the terms of office of 6 directors are up for renewal. You will note that they are suggested to be renewed for different terms. The goal being that with have a better scheduling of the reappointments of terms.

So the reappointments of 4 such directors will be suggested. Let us start with Thomas Buberl as announced last year and as our Chair, mentioned. The Board suggests that the term of office be renewed for a 4-year period. The intent being that he is reappointed as CEO after this meeting. It is also suggested that Ewout Schimbergenst be renewed for a 4-year period. I won't review again the qualities and virtues of Eout. I've just mentioned them. The Board also suggests that Rachel Picard be reappointed as a Director for a 4-year term. The idea being to schedule out the reappointment of terms. Her leadership profile, her in-depth knowledge of customers and consumers and her key experience in developing and rolling out digital transformation projects are key assets to our Board.

Finally, we suggest that you reappoint Gerald Hallin for a 2-year term in line with the bylaws of the company, Gerald Halin having reached 70 years of age, even though he doesn't look it. For close to 30 years, Gerald Alain played a key role in the group's performance and its key transformation steps. The Board unanimously considers that his great knowledge and experience, his knowledge of finance and insurance have been unique contributions to the quality of discussions and to the development work of the Board and its committees.

As I told you a few minutes ago, the Board suggests that Philomena Colatrella be appointed as Director in order to assess the profile and skills and expertise, we suggest we watch short video where she introduces itself.

[Presentation]

You understand that Philomena Colatrella was selected by the directors based on her in-depth knowledge of insurance and health care industries, also because she has great experience in digital transformation innovation aspect. It is suggested that she appointed for a 3-year term. And here again, in order to maintain the scheduling of the terms of office and also note that the Board of Directors assessed the independence of Philomena Colatrella, in line with the AFEP-MEDEF code of conduct and concluded that she could be considered as an independent director.

I will add that the terms of our 2 female directors representing salaried employees of AXA Group, Bettina Cramm and Martin Lievre up for renewal at the end of this shareholders' meeting and that the European Works Council and the European and the France level European group sorry -- Works Council decided to repoint them for a 4-year period. Provided that you vote in favor of these proposals, the Board membership at the end of this meeting, will have 14 directors, including 8 women and 6 men, 9 of whom being independent directors.

The Board committees will be made up as is being displayed behind me on the screen. Ewald will keep sharing the alert committee. Conversely, you will leave the Finance and Risk Committee to fully devote his role as Chair of the Audit Committee, Russia, Gerald and Bettina will be reappointed on the committees, they are sitting on now and Philomena will be appointed a member of the Audit Committee as well as a member of the Finance and Risk Committee. This membership seems satisfactory to us as directors so that we can have a properly operating board. I want to underline that in order to maintain a well-balanced governance mechanism above and beyond regulatory requirements, the independent directors occupy a key central role in all committees. You may note that each committee is being chaired by Independent Director.

The Audit Committee is fully made up of independent directors and the other committees are made up of independent directors as the majority of their members. And the Chair of the Board and the CEO are not members of any of those committees.

Now let us move on to the activities of the Board in 2025. As you can see here, if you have good vision. It was dense activity this year with 9 board meetings, including a 3-day strategic seminar, 22 Chair Committee meeting for so-called executive sessions and many, many training sessions. Artificial intelligence was obviously a key subject in 2025 on the agenda of the Board, and will remain so in 2026. Other topics included geopolitical environment, macroeconomic situations, the reappointment of the CEO and the review of his compensation package, the review, the first sustainability report, the disposal of AXA IM and the acquisition a majority stake in Prima as was mentioned. For more detail, I suggest you look into the annual report. You will also note the excellent attendance rate to Board and the Board committee meetings with an average attendance rate of 97%.

Moving on, as mentioned earlier, in the context of reappointment of Thomas Buberl as CEO of AXA Group, his compensation package, which has remained unchanged since he was reappointed in 2022 was a subject of detailed review by the Board. In this context, the Board took into account, number one, the robust experience and influence of Thomas Buberl, his caliber as an insurance leader and in the market, took also into consideration the actual transformation of the group, which led to record results last year as well as very robust solvency ratio and took into account a benchmark of compensation practices and packages for comparable companies.

Based on this multiple factor review, the Board upon recommendation by the Compensation, Governance and Sustainability Committee decided that it should adjust some items in the CEO compensation package, starting from the reappointment. It is specified that the CEO compensation policy as approved by the shareholders' meeting held in 2025, will remain valid and applicable until his future reappointment. Board decided to set this growth -- annual growth compensation to EUR 1,850,000, and the target flexible compensation being increased to EUR 1.95 billion while maintaining the existing deferred mechanism and mechanically the long-term compensation based on shares, aligning the compensation with CEO with the long-term performance of the group and shareholder interest.

It is to be noted that the CEO does not benefit from any top-up defined contribution pension scheme conversely, he benefits from an action performance share performance, which is dedicated to pension. This plan is granted to all executives of group entities in France. He benefits to a severance compensation, subject to performance conditions, the amount of which being set to 12 months of compensation it being increased by additional month for every year of service. The Board decided that this compensation package would remain unchanged throughout the next term of the CEO, i.e., until April of 2030 as has always been the case in AXA.

The Board considers this new compensation policy has been adapted to AXA Group's profile and its relative position inside the panel of European insurers and banks while remaining competitive across the 4 years of this next term. In addition to this, the Board sold to it to continue to align the interest of executives with those of shareholders. For more detail, I suggest that you look into the universal registration document for fiscal 2025. This compensation package being subject to strict performance terms and conditions and being fully aligned with group strategy aims at fostering the convergence of the interest of the CEO with that of the company and its shareholders over the medium and the long term.

These performance conditions and terms are showed up here up on the screen behind me, the performance terms and conditions for the variable portion and the performance shares remaining unchanged. In 2027, the Board will be reviewing his choice and the weight of the financial and nonfinancial performance indicators so that it may align them with the directions of the new strategic plan for 2027 and 2029.

I suggest that we now review the variable portion of the compensation of CEO for fiscal 2025. Remember that the assessment of the annual performance of this year is based on 2 components: the group collective performance, accounting for 70% and the individual performance, accounting for 30%. The group collective performance is being assessed depending on 4 criteria, underlying earnings per share, cash remittance, the reduction of the carbon footprint in the own assets of the group and the clients recommendation score.

For 2025, it comes out to being 107%. The individual performance of the CEO has been assessed according to the goals and targets set by the Board in the early part of 2025 and they are shown here up on the screen. This individual assessment was assessed to be 115%. So the overall performance of [indiscernible] for fiscal 2025 has been weighted comes out at being 109.4%, representing an annual variable portion of EUR 1,914,500. This includes the deferred part of this compensation package.

As mentioned earlier, a deferred payout mechanism covering 30% of the annual variable portion over a 3-year period is being applied. The amount actually paid out will depend on how the stock price changes throughout the deferred payment period within the limit of a cap of 130% of the deferred payout. The Board saw to it that the assessment of the annual performance level of the CEO and that of the group be relevant with respect to the achievements and that will be aligned with shareholder interest.

As you may know, AXA has been leading policy to grant performance shares to its employees in France and in its international subsidiaries and entities in 2025 and 2026, on 6,000 employees were granted performance shares which are subject to performance conditions, irrespective of their profiles and statute the performance criteria has reviewed and revised by the Board in late 2025, cover both the performance of the operating entity for 35%, the financial performance of the group, 35% and the sustainability performance for the group for the remaining 30%.

Finally, in line with the best industry practices as well as in line with the recommendations of regulators of finance -- the financial industry and other stakeholders, the performance shares granted to the CEO. In addition, 2 big subject to a 3-year lock on lockup period -- sorry, in addition to being subject to a 3-year vested period are subject to a 2-year lockup period in March 2026, 117,708 performance shares with an IFRS value of EUR 3,128,832 have been granted to the CEO. These performance shares are vested without dilution for the shareholders given the choice made by the shareholders.

I suggest we now look at the compensation for the Chair of the Board when he was appointed and in line with the asset made code of conduct, the Board considered that the compensation package, which will be the most appropriate, consistent in paying out to the Chairperson of the Board, a flat compensation is being set to EUR 925,000, this is the amount to be paid out to the Chairman for fiscal year 2025. The proposal is to maintain the compensation package for the chairperson of the Board as well as the compensation packages for the directors to be unchanged for 2026 these being considered as being adapted, fair and well balanced. So no change is being proposed.

Finally, as is the case every year, I would conclude by a few words on the profit-sharing schemes for group employees. As you may know, the group offers employee shareholding scheme called Share Plan in the form have a rights issue, which is referred reserved for them. For fiscal 2025, celebrating in the 40th anniversary of the AXA brand, the AXA Group employees benefited from additional matching mechanism with 1 share freely offered to 4:1 share board with a limit of 20 shared Board in total more than 42,000 employees in 40 countries participated in the operation, up 61% compared with 20:4. And the total subscribed amount was EUR 435 million. In order to avoid any dilution. It was proceeded with as in the previous years to the buyback and cancellation of an equivalent amount of shares.

As at the 31st of December 2025, the employees -- and the agents of AXA Group held 4.87% of equity capital and 7.04% of voting rights for the AXA Group.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes my report. I would like to thank you for your attention, and I turn over to Antoine, to our Chairman.

Thank you very much, Guillaume, for this presentation. Let me say that the report on corporate governance has established in line with articles L.225-37 in sequel and AL-22, 10-8of the commercial code are in the universal registration document for fiscal 2025. And I will now ask Mr. Pierre Planchon of KPMG S.A. to now make his report for the statutory auditors.

Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders, in my capacity as statutory auditor for AXA Group and on behalf of KPMG and Ernst & Young, I will briefly and summarily review the key facts in our reports to your meeting today. Our auditing work covered 4 key parts. The auditing of the parent company and consolidated financial statements as well as specific procedures provided by law, the related party agreements, the equity operations and an issuance of securities. And finally, the disclosures on sustainability, including that of the European taxonomy. Our auditing work was jointly conducted by the 2 accounting firms covering all of the significant entities and units of the AXA Group.

With respect to the parent company financial statements of the AXA company, we have provided an unqualified opinion on these financial statements. Our auditing led us to especially focus on the valuation of equity interest in related companies or having equity ties and also we looked into the valuation of claims-related provisions under the reassurance contracts we have no comment to make under this specific procedures with respect to the financial -- the consolidated financial statements, we are providing also an unqualified opinion on these consolidated financial statements knowing that our auditing work worked on the assessment of the liabilities in the health and health insurance B, they measured according to general model or the VFA model.

We also looked into the assessment of the claims-related liabilities in P&C business, especially with respect to long tail -- to long-tail branches as well as the assessment of the intangible assets, the recoverable values of goodwills connected with the P&C portfolios. We have no comment to make on the fairness of the information provided in the management report nor on the consistency with the financial statements. And we do confirm that the presentation of the consolidated financial statements abide by and comply with the unique European electronic format called ECAF with respect to related party agreements, we are reporting to you any related party agreements that we have made -- that we've been informed of. I can now tell you that no such agreements were reported to us nor any prior agreements, which would have gone on in 2025.

With respect to equity operations connected with Resolution #17, which is authority given to the Board of Directors for 18 months with a limit of 10% of capital to reduce capital over 24 months. Based on our auditing work, we have no comment to make on the causes nor on the terms for such capital reduction.

With respect to resolutions 18 and 19, which relate to capital increases, 1 resolution covering capital increased results for members of an employee sharing scheme and an increased capital reserves for any staff category, the 2 with the maximum nominal annual cumulative cap of EUR 135 million with authority given to the Board for the next 18 months provided that a subsequent review of the final conditions covering these capital increases. We have no comment to make on the way the insurance prices have been defined since these plants have not been decided upon today. We have no opinion to make on the conditions nor on the suppression the subscription right. But when such operations happen, additional report will be issued.

Finally, we have conducted the auditing work for disclosures and sustainability. We have based our work in the context of regulations, which are still fast changing in Europe, the publication of the so-called taxonomy dedicated acts, including the Omnibus package. Our role consisted in expressing a limited opinion on 3 things: the compliance of the process to establish these exposures on sustainability based on the IFRS standard. The compliance of such disclosures with the regulations and requirements and the compliance with the obligations and requirements under articulate on the taxonomy regulation based on these procedures, we have not reported or identified any areas emissions inconsistencies.

Without calling this conclusion to a question, we are drawing your attention on 2 aspects, which are shown in the sustainably report, the limits with respect to the calculation of the finance emissions and the carbon footprint of the insurance portfolio, #1 as well as the ways -- sorry, as well as the scope and assumptions taken to set the intermediary objectives by 2030 for access climate plan. By we have concluded all of the reports I have just mentioned, we are providing a qualified opinion for with no comment on them, which would call our assurance to question.

Thank you for your attention. I remain available any questions.

Thank you for this review and for this report by you as statutory auditors. We are coming close to the Q&A session with the audience. I suggest before we knew that to watch a short movie to present the shareholder.

[Presentation]

So this is the time for our discussion with you. By the way, before our session, we received 3 electronic mails concerning written questions. These questions were sent by [indiscernible] Finance and by Mrs. Catherine. These questions as well as the answers provided by the Board of Directors are on our website in a heading dedicated to written questions.

Some other questions were also sent to us, but beyond the time frame required. So we will answer all these questions as we always do as part of our relation with shareholders. But this will take place, of course, beyond the legal framework of our session.

Having said that, I suggest now that we open the floor. I ask shareholders in the room who want to ask questions to express themselves with the hostesses who are in the room in order to give a maximum of possibilities to maximum of people, please be very concise as much as possible.

By the way, if your questions are related to a contract to claim or I urge you to go to the client stand, which is at the entrance of this session. Our expert teams are available there to answer your questions in a more effective way than we could do it here.

So let's take the question from the front row. Sir?

Hello, Chairman, dear friends, well done for your performance. Here are my questions. It's essentially about AI. Is this an opportunity, a threat for the AXA Group? And what is the ecological impact of it?

Thank you for this question, which is at the heart of our thoughts. And as you noticed, we have several times have been talking about it, about this AI. First of all, let me point out that AXA was ranked first among the major insurers by the professional ranking for the degree of preparation to this technological revolution. For us, obviously, AI is an opportunity that is a major one, and we already saw that it is a great accelerator in order to enhance the service we provide our customers. Files are dealt with much more quickly and risk expertise assessment and appraisal is done much better, and this helps us concentrate teams on the real high-value and human actions.

So we have no doubts about this. It's an opportunity, but it is also a challenge, a challenge, which in light of the deep transformation of our organization of our working ways of doing things, we are convinced that this challenge, we will meet it if we can involve the people at every level of the organization into implementing these new tools, and this is the strategy that is being rolled out. And to answer more precisely to your last question about the risk of contradiction with the climate commitments. I think that risk can be managed if you speed up the energy transition and in regard to the development of decarbonated energies. It is the strategy we have, and we are contributing at our scale to a good reconciling of the data centers, the AIs together with the speeding up of the energy transition in order to avert to be in a situation where we are in a contradiction.

There's a question on the right-hand side, question # 7.

Would I have a question -- one single question, you'll be happy that deals with your earnings. You gave results, which are increasing by 6% or 8%, 10%, which is far higher than inflation. I congratulate you for that. But you essentially gave the underlying earnings per share. I was surprised that there was no net income. So I looked at the P&L of the financial report, and I saw that the net income was from under EUR 8 billion to just under EUR 10 billion, which is an increase of nearly 25%, which is huge.

By looking at the item -- the previous item, I saw that the profits or losses of businesses was more than EUR 2 billion. It was EUR 155 million before in the previous year. The results that you gave reflect, of course, the changes in the industry. Apparently, it's an exceptional profit related perhaps to a divestiture. I don't -- I've looked everything. You didn't mention it, I think. What does it correspond for? And by the way, this a good credit that I give you is that you have 2/3 of what is distributed. You were modest because you didn't mention the net income nor the top-up that you have deferred. So financially is very good. So tell me this sharp increase in the net income, what can it be equated for?

Thank you for your question and for your watchfulness. Thomas, thank you for your questions. First of all, we are looking at the 2 lines, the underlying earnings and the net income because both are very significant for us. Of course, you did notice that there is definitely a sharp increase compared to last year. It's due to the divestiture of AXA Investment Manager. You will recall that we decided with the Board to divest that subsidiary, which was an entrepreneurial creation with a lot of success, but we then found itself in an environment of increased competitiveness globally speaking, at the BNP, that transaction was closed in the middle of 2025. And therefore, because the company was an internal creation with a few acquisitions. In the meantime, the accounting value, the carrying value in our balance sheet was below the sales price at EUR 5.4 million. And why -- this is why the company made a capital gain, which represents exactly the amount that you mentioned, sir.

Let's stick to this area of the room. Question #6. [Foreign Language] the NGO Reclaim Finance for 4 years, I've been coming to the session as in every year. I'd like to ask a question before all of this, I'd like to come back to the exceptional earnings of your group, record sales, 75% going back to the shareholders. And based on these results, the climate change impacts everyone, except AXA. Your shareholders applaud know the price to pay for strategy globally, you increased your prices on average by 25% in the last 3 years and reduced sharply its exposure to nat gas, especially via AXA XL.

AXA continues to feed the climate risk and reduces its exposure in parallel. And despite your commitments, you continue to ensure and finance the development of oil, gas and liquefied natural gas. And this is a stained when you hear from your managers talking about prevention, which is mentioned by several people here. My question is the following. Therefore, when will AXA stop feeding the climate crisis by stopping any support through its investments to the development of oil, gas and LNG? And when will you finally apply to your business your own prevention message?

Thank you for your question, which is very clear. I will let Guillaume Borie answer.

After having specified before that, that, obviously, the -- we are not moving away from our climate targets, which are among the most ambitious in our insurance industry. And we several times have raised it even further. And gradually, we are trying to continue to make it even more ambitious.

Thank you for your question to come back to 2025 compared to your questions, we are continuing to support our clients about these climate catastrophes. Yes, it's better now. And in the face of the various natural risk as regards to the increase of our prices, bear in mind that the cover of climate risk is just a piece of the cover we offer our clients.

In fact, prices have been increasing in the past few years to cover the increase in climate risk because in our business, we try to mutualize risk. So when the increase on average, certainly, the premiums increase. It's a need to allow us to continue to stick to our commitments over the long term. And therefore, this is what we did in full responsibility to be able to continue to support our clients.

One example, just in 2025, we compensated for several billions of climate claims in France, it represents EUR 438 million of compensation paid to our clients in the face of the various natural events. De facto across the globe in 2025, climate catastrophes were significantly lower, which reflects what we know. Years may be volatile from 1 year to the other. It doesn't change the long-term trend for the past 20 years on average, there's a sharp increase of these climate-related catastrophes, and we continue to support our customers in this regard.

Alongside this, that we continue to have a very ambitious policy when it comes to the fight against climate change and encouraging adjustment to such change. For this reason, we committed ourselves to fully move out coal by 2040. Since last year, we no longer ensure no new gas or oil project with the exception of some specific players that who we consider have a climate transition plan that is believable. Why? Because in order to support the energy transition, there's a need for capital. So we consider that it's also our responsibility to continue to support the players who have a transition plan and necessarily need not only investment, therefore, capital, but also ensure to allow us to develop these new projects they have and very often to develop them, they need to continue also the existing projects that provide them the necessary capital in order to follow this innovation path.

So both go hand in hand. And each time we examine with great attention, the existence of a credible transition plan. And if there isn't any, we do not support those players, whether it comes to investments or in terms of insurers to be perfectly exhaustive. I conclude on your last point concerning the LNG liquid natural gas projects. We no longer are ensuring we do it for this in a particular geopolitical context because we consider in order to allow the European Union to stick to its decarbonation goals, given the current circumstances, action, access to liquefied natural gas remains necessary to provide the security of -- and good supply of energy, and we continue to encourage the decarbonation strategy. This is why we selectively support some specific projects related to LNG.

Thank you, Guillaume. Let's move to the other part of the room for your further questions.

Francois Chermon, member of the Advisory Committee. Let me come back to the geopolitical context, which was listed as a second risk by all the experts in your excellent report in this world, which is more unstable. Therefore, the legal frameworks seem uncertain. Your clients and companies, are they still resilient? And what about their investment decisions? And what about the general public? It is at a loss and being rocked by the various announcements. What are the major risks that may impact the group? And what are your action levers?

Thank you very much. Thomas possibly could answer this.

Thank you, madam, for your question. You are totally right on 2 aspects. the future risk report is a very good way to summarize the complexity of our current world and environment because we note that the risks have changed in their dominance and in their priority levels and also the context has become much more difficult with respect to interconnections across these risks. At the time, in the past, risks were quite distinct and separate. Now they are very much intertwined. And we are experiencing an area of so-called poly crisis where we're experiencing successive crisis in chain. So we had pauses at the past in between 2 crisis. We no longer have these pauses.

Now obviously, this situation is very uncomfortable as a situation for our corporate clients, but as well as for our retail clients because both companies and citizens are affected by geopolitical instability every day. I just mentioned the price of oil, the price of food and how all these are affected. But you're right to say that our corporate clients have been suffering the most and have been approaching us and challenging us with many questions.

This is so many opportunities to help them, to support them, to advise them and to guide them into the way they can navigate and manage these risks. Now today, we have lots of products and solutions and services, which try and address these risks and contingencies with respect to insurance cover and with respect to prevention activities because in a world which is more and more fragmented, it is important that we anticipate the next issues, the next announcements in order to provide optimal protection.

And jointly with our clients and customers, we continually review and revise their hedges, their prevention and protection programs to continually optimally adapt. For AXA, it means that in a more and more uncertain world where we find it difficult where the next blow, where the next issue will come from, it is of the greatest importance that we diversify, that we diversify investments, but also that we diversify our risks. What does this concretely mean?

It means that we take up lots of risks here and everywhere. But the net exposure levels against each and every risk, we have tended to limit. And it is true also on the side of investments. And you may have noted that in the last 4 years, across the crisis that we have experienced that AXA has always been affected to a more or less degree by this crisis, but to a more or less degree, means that there never was a crisis where AXA was affected to the root, was fundamentally affected. And this diversification policy which has helped us control our risk better every day is a key approach going forward in order to manage this big ship, which is AXA Group and also to be able to reimburse claims every day to our clients and help them in their prevention activities.

Thank you, Thomas. Let us take questions from the bottom of the room. Question #4.

I'm an individual shareholder. I would like to know whether you have already had your 2026 finances affected by the war in the Middle East, especially with respect to the P&C claims and damages for the mid-market and SME companies.

Now it is a very current question. So I will have Guillaume answer, but I can tell you that we have been very little affected by the crisis, but we've been extremely watchful, says the Chair to anticipate any future developments in this waring situation, which may generate more significant and more dire conditions.

As our Chairman said, we have limited exposure to this Middle East region. We have teams in the field with whom we are in daily contact, and we whom we support, obviously, in Dubai to support some of our clients in international health care business. And in Lebanon, we have a joint venture operating in Lebanon above and beyond these field teams and our local operations via our insurance cover for large corporations under AXA XL's operations, we've been providing insurance cover to large shipping companies and to large airlines, which obviously have been massively impacted by the situation. But as you may know, today, destruction of civil infrastructure and vessels and aircraft have been very limited.

So we have been able to manage the consequences, but we remain very much engaged in support of our clients. And we need to keep being able to support and help them to manage their future projects. And you heard about the discussion to maintain and uphold insurance -- marine insurance cover to make sure that shipping lines and marine operations remain covered by insurance products, and we remain close to these clients.

Thank you, Guillaume. Let us go back to this part of the whole, question #7.

Yes, hello. We can see that the disposal of AXA IM boosted the performance of BNP Paribas. What will we be doing in the windfall proceeds? Will you be reinvesting in the P&C in health care or in other sector of the company? In France, there is one fire every 10 minutes. It isn't it the role of insurance companies to work ahead of time to prevent risks by implementing preventative activities, better knowing your clients, better knowing the state and conditions of their buildings and of their facilities to prevent fires, which are very frequent in France.

There are 2 very different questions. The first question, we already have touched upon because we have mentioned in a very explicit manner how we were going to be using the proceeds of this disposal by returning part of it to our shareholders and by keeping part of the proceeds to fund our investments, including capital expenditures in technology solutions, which are of great importance. And if there are opportunities out there, we may seize them for external growth investments.

The second question is on prevention activities, and Thomas will answer this.

Thank you for your question. So as I already mentioned in my presentation, it is very important for us that we focus our operations on purely insurance business operation. This is why it was logical that we should dispose of the asset management business. You heard and saw from my presentation that we acquired a company called Prima. Prima is a direct insurance business operating in Italy and in a few more countries. And this is a good example of an opportunity which we seized in which we reinvested part of the proceeds from the disposal of AXA and because of EUR 5.4 billion disposal price, we used EUR 3.8 billion for the share buyback program to balance out the loss in earnings and the variance has been available to conduct acquisitions, including the acquisition of Prima. And I can tell you that ever since the acquisition of Prima, the operations have been going very well in Italy.

Now as to your second question about fires, you are totally right, sir. It is quite horrible to see that there are so many fires in France. Continually, it unfortunately has become a new normal. Indeed, prevention activities are already of great importance for us and will be even more important for us in the future because with a rising number of risks, you have an increasing ticket, an increasing price for this risk to make sure risks remain insurable and that insurance cover remain a product that anyone can afford being insured that is we must push prevention activities much more.

We have been working today in pushing prevention and preventative activities against fires because when you take out insurance cover for a plant, you have sprinklers experts who come and inspect your sprinkler system to check that the sprinkler system of the facility comply with the current standards and update them as needed. And new technology like sensors and AI solutions push the limits and help us go further because we know that you have constraints with human activities.

With technology solutions, you may have a 24/7 monitoring with a much quicker intervention rather than human experts. So it is very important for the future that we place a greater focus on prevention activities.

Thank you. Let us go to the back of the auditorium. Question #9.

Hello, everyone. I'm an individual shareholder. What strategy are you putting forward to develop and expand in countries which have a culture to be reluctant to and not be too open for insurance products like Southeast Asia. You said that a strong value and attribute of the group is boldness. Having personal experience in the field of insurance, I can give you my contact details after the shareholders' meeting.

Well, we'll be very happy, sir, to get your contact details. Now with respect to Southeast Asia, what can Guillaume -- thank you, Sara, and thank you for your question. We have a presence in Southeast Asia, mainly in 3 countries: Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. In these 3 markets, we operate in partnership with local partners. These major characteristics of how we've been expanding in these countries. We usually go hand-in-hand with a local partner, which generally is one of the leading national banks, which makes it easier for us to reach out to customers and clients to understand the cultural specifics right from the start. And you're right that insurance is a very local and specific offer, which is very much rooted into the culture of each country. And when we have a local partner, it makes it easier to penetrate such countries.

The second key factor is that in these 3 countries, one of the fastest developing channel is by way of agents, which are not banking agents. And these agents are usually individuals who distribute insurance products in addition to other professional activities, knowing that they do not work full time as we may have the situation in Western Europe, which means that we have a very high number of such agents in those 3 countries in order to be effective at the commercial level. So these are our 2 main drivers.

In complement to that,in these 3 countries, as is many other emerging countries for the last 8 years, we have developed a so-called inclusive insurance offering, which aims at developing products, which are bespoke customized products, meeting the needs of the local communities, especially low-income communities where we really have to focus on the basics. And this is why we have called -- this unit at AXA called AXA Essentials. And in the world, we've been covering more than 20 million policyholders via our inclusive insurance solutions.

I'd like to insist for a few moments on the last point mentioned by Guillaume because AXA was a precursor when it comes to inclusive insurance, as we call it, that is offers in order to improve the cover of low-income populations, in particular, in emerging countries in which we are present, but not only. And all in all, today, we have over 20 million clients around the globe who are part of this category. Many of our competitors are starting to develop now fairly comparable approaches, but I think we were the ones who blazed the trail. So unfortunately, we cannot take -- we can take only 2 questions, maybe #3 to remain in this area of the room. Microphone.

Jean-Marcernore, former employee at AXA. AXA is also a bank. I'd like to know if the bank is still part of the main focus of AXA, strategically speaking.

Thomas?

Thank you for this question. And I'll share with you an experience from the ground because last week, I was in Lyon and visited an agency. And after I said, hello, listen, Thomas, the bank is really what helps us go forward with the insurance. That's the feedback that you get everywhere from the agents because the bank plays a significant role in creating the loyalty of our clients in the frequency of contact as well because many times, and I say fortunately, in the cases of claims, unfortunately, we have very few contacts with our clients. And the bank has that element of contact frequency.

Of course, in a world that is increasingly becoming difficult when it comes to regulations, we must also think about how we can, in the best possible way, work in this framework while retaining a banking offer. This is why several years back, we decided to work together and create a partnership with a bank that lends us their infrastructure so that we can be 100% in contact with the banking rules and at the same time, be able to offer products that our clients actually want from us.

And today, the situation is well stabilized, works well for us and the satisfaction of our clients is there in terms of the banking offer is very high. This is why the bank in France is definitely a key important element in our client relation.

Thank you, Thomas. Since the question was short and the answer was efficient, let's take 2 more questions, 2 last questions. Maybe #6.

Dear Chairman, hello, everyone. I'd like to come back to AI. We have talked at length about it this afternoon. The points are interesting for us are the following ones. What is the percentage of employees who to this day have been trained on AI? And also, what is the place of the human factor within the AI was not underlined very well this afternoon.

I have a second question, which is about people taking away the identity of people. There were some people who suffered from this in order to support them. Or are you thinking about guaranteeing something that could apply in the spoofing area. This is about spoofing.

I'll let Guillaume answer. On the first question, AI, I indicated it perhaps a bit too swiftly. For us, AI is more of a human challenge than a technological challenge. This is the state of mind for us when we take a look at this revolution. Guillaume, over to you.

Thank you very much, and thank you very much for your question, sir. Yes, as a matter of fact, first and foremost, it's a human challenge for us. And what we see day after day with all our teams is that AI is spreading across all our processes through the use that our own teams are making of AI. In other words, there is no other choice than adopting it because it is our teams that are requesting this. It makes sense because the use we make it as citizens or individuals, and then we expect that it will be available daily on our workstations in our working environment. This is how already for the past 3 years, there has been a speeding up of the use of many AI-based tools by our employees.

We were one of the first global groups of making available the language model that is the access to ChatGPT, which internally is called SecureGPT within a platform, which is secured. As you know, one of the challenges for us is that we cannot let the numerous data and the sensitive ones that we manage for our clients on external service. So we must assure that the use is made under good conditions.

Such massive development in uses has led us to rolling out training policies, which are systematic across the group. And one way or another, I can tell you that each employee has had access to training related to AI, which is quite different depending on their responsibilities and roles with it's very generic. It's very short training to remind facilitate access to these platforms. And for other sectors, it's more intense. For example, those who are technological solutions development, there are thousands of our employees who are working on the development of our services for our clients through our websites and platforms. And obviously, they have a more intense use of AI in order to facilitate their daily work, which was supported by training.

So you can see that across our AI strategies, there is, of course, the applications for serving our clients and it's also the transformation of industrial processes in terms of claims management and design of products and pricing. But more fundamentally, the battle we are undertaking is a good use and a good adoption by all our teams. So first and foremost, it's a cultural change in our company, which through the use of all the senior managers through the training of managers and through the availability made to all our employees around the globe of adapted solutions.

Thank you, Guillaume. One last question, short, please. We are really tight on time, number three.

Individual shareholder. I'd like to push further the previous question that was raised since the beginning of the session, we have talked at length about AI and risks. But in my opinion, globally, and even if the last question was a bit related to the human area, it's the human area, the training, the internal human elements and your relationship with your clients. And even if you have a ChatGPT, which is called secure and your own service, I believe that maybe you are aware that several days ago, barely file or database super secured of our interior ministry was hacked and millions of individual identities were stolen.

And my question, therefore, is in relation to AI, especially now with all these interconnected systems is where will we end in terms of individual freedom and the control element. All it takes is that these files fall into the hands of a malevolent manager, which we have seen in other parts of the world that we find ourselves in a society where there won't be any freedom left. And as you said before, I think that each person in this room should think very carefully before entering into ChatGPT or something sooner, which initially is not secured at all and puts in all the data that you put in and in several months or years, anyone can exploit them to monitor you on every gesture and fact concerning you.

Thank you for your question, which resonates with a concern, which is ours, which is at the heart of our thoughts and our work, of course, Guillaume.

Thank you very much for your question, sir. Obviously, you're raising 2 issues, which are absolutely basic. The first one is the challenge of sovereignty. And the second problem is about safety and security on sovereignty. These technologies de facto are available for the most solely coming from the United States and slightly from China and besides that, coming from a few global players. Therefore, it leads us to have a risk management policy that is very strict and discipline, which aims at diversify as much as possible the service providers and the nature of technologies used, but within the limit of what is available because we are facing also the realities of the world.

So in the current situation, certainly, we are also forced to call upon a limited number of possible solutions. It is not thinkable to move out of this right now. That's a principle of reality. And permanently, we check that we limit as much as possible such dependency and that we have reversibility options if ever in the future, other solutions were to emerge and be available. In the case of safety and security challenges, I was referring to this, in regard to our platform and all the solutions for our employees. The security and safety of our information systems is at the heart of our company's risk management and the monitoring of the Audit Committee and the Risk Management Committee of our company. And we review these programs on a regular basis to systematically reinforce all the security and safety with very concrete consequences, including for our teams for which and quite rightly, they may complain spontaneously. We ask several authentication. We check access to each system.

So we constantly monitor this, which is fitting the critical of the data. We manage some data are particularly sensitive. I have in mind, especially our business where we have insurance for this. We have standards that are even stronger and strict zero risk unfortunately does not exist, but we invest constantly more to limit as much as possible those risks and be able to respond very quickly when unfortunately, there is a hacking taking place, and we'll continue to do so in the future.

Thank you for your participation in this exercise. I think we had a very good discussion. I suggest that we move now to the vote of the resolutions.

Yes. Before Guillaume specify how we will be voting, let me read the final quorum. I give you the interim one. Things have intensified. We finally have 1,444,465,864 shares represented. They represent 71.23% of votes, which gives us a quorum of 72.21%, which is an excellent quorum. Guillaume, over to you.

Thank you very much. So this is the time you expected so much. Please give me the privilege of your attention for some practical information. You all have a personalized electronic voting box, which is on the screen. The screen on the box allows you to check the number of votes you hold or represent for our general meeting. To vote on each resolution, you must press firmly on one of the following keys: for green button, abstain, yellow button, against the red button. Your vote will be displayed for a few seconds on the screen of your box.

In order to vote within the allotted time, please wait for the indication Voting is open and limit your vote to one single vote per resolution. If you do not press any of the buttons, you will be considered to abstain from voting. I remind you that the poll is taking place under the supervision of Matt Com. And please note that electronic voting machines must be handed back to the hospices at the end of the meeting. Please switch now. We shall now proceed to vote on the resolution on the agenda for this meeting. I thank you to please switch off your cell phones for the duration of the call.

You are asked to vote on 21 resolution, 16 ordinary and 5 extraordinary ones. The resolutions which are ordinary ones require for them to be valid to have a majority of more than 50% of expressed votes versus the extraordinary resolutions, which require a 2/3 majority of votes. I suggest we don't read out the text of the detailed resolution subject to your vote. As mentioned early by our Chair, you will find them in the convening notice, which has been published in the legal gazette on the 27th February 2026 and which have been made available to you in -- under the legal conditions.

First 16 resolutions are ordinary resolutions. The first resolution relates to the approval of the parent company's financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. The second resolution relates to the approval of the consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended 31st of December 2025. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is now closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #3 relates to the appropriation of income for the fiscal year ended on the 31st of December 2025 and the setting of the dividend of EUR 2.32 per share dividend. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been carried. Resolution #4 relates to the approval of the information referred to in Article L.22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code relating to the compensation of corporate officers. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution 5 relates to the approval of the components of compensation paid during or granted in respect of the fiscal year ended 31st of December 2025 to Antoine Gosset-Grainville, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #6 relates to the approval of the components of compensation paid during or granted in respect of the fiscal year ended 31st of December 2025 to Thomas Buberl, Chief Executive Officer of AXA Group. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution 7 relates to the approval of the compensation policy applicable to the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution 8 relates to the approval of the compensation policy applicable to the Chief Executive Officer. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #9 relates to the approval of the compensation policy applicable to the directors. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #10 relates to the statutory auditor special report on agreements referred to in Article L.225-38, which states no new or existing agreements. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #11 relates to the renewal of the term of Thomas Buberl as Director for a 4-year term. The voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Congratulations, Thomas. Resolution #12 relates to the renewal of the mandate of Director for a 4-year term. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #13 relates to the renewal of the mandate of Director 3-year term. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #14 relates to the renewal of the mandate of Gerald Harlin as director for 2-year term. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #15 relates to the appointment of Philomena Colatrella as Director for a 3-year term. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #16 relates to authority granted to the Board of Directors to operate on the shares of the company within the limit of 10% of stock capital for a unit price of EUR 50 and for an 18-year period. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. The next 5 resolutions are within the remit of the extraordinary shareholders meeting. Resolution #17 relates to authorizing the Board of Directors to reduce the share capital through cancellation of treasury shares within the limit of 10% of capital share by periods 24 months and for an 18-month period. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #18 relates to delegation of power granted to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by issuing shares, securities giving the right to the company's shares reserved for employees involved in sponsored company savings plan without prescription right of the share. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #19 relates to delegation of power granted to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by issuing shares without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders in favor of a specific category of beneficiaries in order to enable employees, tied agents residing in some countries as well as corporate offices to benefit from this plan depending on the local specific terms to formulate as close as possible to those other beneficiaries of the group in the context of the previous resolutions. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #20 relates to amending Article 10C of the bylaws relative to the appointment of the employee shareholder representative to the Board of Directors in the context of vacancy complying with the rules of gender balance representation in the Board of Directors. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution has been adopted. Resolution #21 and last resolution relates to amending Article 23 of the bylaws relating to shareholders' meeting. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed and the resolution has been adopted. Thank you all.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you again for your attendance here today. I hope this meeting was fruitful and answered your questions so that you may arrange for your agenda next spring. The next shareholders' meeting will be on the 22nd of April 2027.

On the way out, our hosts and hostesses will get your voting boxes back and will give you a so-called resilience kit provided by AXA Prevention business. In the current context, we thought it was useful to have such a resilience kit, which is made up of survival, blanket, lamp and a water bottle. I hope you'll be -- you'll never need to use it. Thank you again. And since no other items is on the agenda, I declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Morgan Stanley's European Financials Conference. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Hadley Cohen. I run the insurance research team here at Morgan Stanley. I'm delighted to be joined by Guillaume Borie today from AXA. Guillaume is the Global Head of Strategy, Underwriting, Risk, Finance and Technology. So Guillaume, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much, Hadley, and good morning, everyone.

First of all, can I say congratulations on the new role.

Thank you.

Only a few months in. Maybe to start, if you can sort of say how things are going so far, what you've been particularly pleased with, what you've been particularly surprised by and -- yes.

Well, look, I have to say that I've been lucky enough to join in this new role at a time where the group, AXA is in very good shape. You saw our earnings and results for '25, delivering really at the top end of all of our targets, strong top line growth, 6%, strong UEPS growth, 8% and also a clear confidence message that we gave you when we released our results.

We are committed to deliver at the top end of our range for '26 again. So the group is in very good shape. And I tend to say that all businesses today are really firing up, and we saw very positive dynamics across the board.

When I look at that, if I have to think about not surprises, but things that over the past few weeks, I've carefully looked at, it's the very fact that starting from this strong position, starting from very well-performing businesses, I do believe that there is still some upside for all of us. And that across the board, if we are extremely focused on a couple of top priorities, we have the ability to keep growing earnings at a sustainable pace year after year.

When I look at those priorities, I would quickly mention 4 this morning where I would like all of us across the group behind Thomas to really focus ourselves. The very first one is organic growth. We can do even better on organic growth, growing volumes. Why so? Because we have very strong margins across the board. We have really, over the past 10 years, managed to develop a pure insurance player with very strong level of technical discipline. It's a good platform out of which we can grow.

The second top priority for all of us should be to accelerate the scaling of our artificial intelligence solutions, accelerate really a high-quality AI agenda. I see that as a strong opportunity, and I guess we will have questions on that later, a strong opportunity to improve all the elements of the P&L. We can come back to it.

The third element is that I still see some room for improvement on the efficiency side. We can improve efficiency discipline across the board. Obviously, within our operating companies, more efforts on cost efficiency, more effort on automation onshoring, but also at the corporate center level on our holding costs.

And last but not least, we will continue to maintain extremely strong capital discipline, obviously, around our distribution policy, 75% distribution, but also around the way we deploy capital locally in order to fuel the organic growth and in order to fuel investment in artificial intelligence. So you see all in all, I think the group is in very good shape. All businesses are performing well, and there is room for further improvement around those 4 priorities. So I'm very positive.

Excellent. I think we'll come on to all 4 of those priorities in due course. But before I do, we're all for audience participation here at the conference. So we do have a polling question for you, which should come up on the screen in due course. And that is what is currently the most important investment debate for AXA shares and your choices are commercial pricing outlook and XL profitability, cash remittances versus shareholder payouts, capital management, so M&A versus share buybacks, lower EPS growth targets versus peers, French political risks or AI disruption risks and opportunities. And you have 10 seconds, which should start now.

Interesting commercial pricing outlook, XL, it's more evenly spread than I was expecting. And I can see Anu was taking bets in the front row as well. So maybe if we start on P&C more broadly, given that's where the majority ended up. But before we get on to XL, on European retail side of things, pricing has been very, very strong. It's been a useful tailwind for you for the last couple of years. How much more momentum do you think there is in those lines of business?

I think on the retail book in Continental Europe and to a certain extent in this country in the U.K., there is still positive pricing momentum clearly. So obviously, if you look at the absolute figure, it's going to reduce, and it has already reduced in '25, and it's likely to be the same trend in '26. But the absolute level is not that interesting. The question is the relative level against our claims trends and against also CPI.

The reality of the retail market is that we have been permanently able to really sustain pricing above CPI for the very fact that, first, this is more or less the claims trends in this business. And second, let's not also forget that we benefit across the board from relatively stable, if not reduced frequency of the risk that we insure. So again, the pricing environment, in my view, in retail is positive. And therefore, for us, I see that as a good opportunity first to further expand margin.

And I do believe that in retail, SME, in P&C across the board at AXA, we still have room to further improve technical margin and that you will see that in '26 and in the coming years. But on top of that, it's again a great opportunity for us to seize this opportunity, this pricing environment, this conducive environment in order to grow our book. And for that, we have very strong assets, high-quality distribution networks that we further expanded in '25, good partnerships in several European countries.

Look at what we did in Spain with Correos, look at what we did in the U.K. with the Lloyds Bank. So we have solid distribution partners, proprietary, nonproprietary. We have a very strong direct franchise, the leading direct franchise of all the international players in insurance. And we are permanently investing in customer retention.

I think that in the current environment, when you're best-in-class in terms of technical margins and pricing quality, the opportunity is also to further improve customer retention. Are we going to reduce customer churn? That's for me, one of the challenge we have, and I believe an opportunity in the end to grow our volumes.

Very interesting. And linked to that, how -- so can you talk a bit more about this customer retention? And what you're doing to sort of focus on that, be it with regards to cross-selling products or what have you? But presumably, this is all a key part of the organic growth story by reducing the churn.

Yes, absolutely. And that's not only a key part of the organic growth story, but that's also, in my opinion, the best position to be in because by definition, the more we will retain our existing customers, the more benefit you will see both on the top line but also on the bottom line because when we retain customers, it's better margins. We know that. And we live in an industry where attracting new customer is extremely expensive. So the more we can do to best retain our customer, the better it will be for all of us.

Where do we focus ourselves? I see really 3 areas. First, it's a matter of pricing adequacy. Are we able in our retail books to really price each and every customer at the right level? It's not an anecdote. Over the years, many of the players in this industry have the habit of pricing across the board and pushing price increases at every renewal that are exactly the same for all their customers. We see that a lot in our local markets with the small players in the market, for example, mutuals.

We have a much more personalized approach to pricing, including through AI. With AI, we now have the opportunity really to revisit the pricing at the level of a single policyholder. So you need to have a better offer at renewal for the best customers in your portfolio. That's the first element of customer retention. To a certain extent, in my view, it's the most important one.

The second top priority is around distribution efficiency. How do we make sure indeed that we invest in cross-selling because we know that, obviously, the highest number of the policies for a single policyholder, the best retention you're going to get. But also on distribution efficiency, making sure that they know how to defend their existing portfolio. It's the quality of the solutions we give them, including in terms of CRM solutions. It's also the quality of the products and solution we are offering on the platform.

And last but not least, on customer retention, obviously, quality of the service we provide. We have invested a lot on those questions. You see that with the high quality of our NPS score across all of our retail operations. We need to continue to invest on that. And there also, I see strong opportunity with AI in order to be much more efficient in the way we pay claims, the fastest possible and in order also to deliver permanent advice to our customer, in particular, through their smartphone or all the platform they are now using.

We'll come on to AI shortly. But I think the organic growth story and the strategy there is quite clear on the retail side. But if we move maybe to the commercial side of things, there is clear pricing pressure in that market right now. So how are you thinking about top line versus bottom line for the XL business and commercial lines more broadly?

So first, I think it's important to keep in mind that when I look at the P&C business of AXA, it's EUR 58 billion book. Out of this EUR 58 billion, 2/3 is retail SME mid-market, mostly in Europe. Those 2/3, they are going to follow the trends we have just discussed before. Good pricing environment, still opportunity for us to further expand margins. It's true also in SMEs and good opportunity for volume growth. So there again, it's not the same trend as the trend we are seeing on the large commercial book of XL, which is 1/3 of our portfolio.

On the XL portfolio, yes, the environment is more competitive. It's a fact. Then can we say that there is one cycle across the board? I don't believe so. And I think that much more than focusing ourselves on pricing cycle, we should discuss pricing adequacy. We do have opportunities to grow our portfolio at XL under very good margins and with good profitability. We have profitable growth opportunities. XL is not just a book in the U.S., for example. XL is 26 countries, 400 products, well-diversified book of business.

When you look at the split of the business, you have casualty, you have property, you have professional lines, you have specialty. And the trends are very different from one book to another. So the name of the game for us is diversification and agility. Over the past 3 years, we have prepared ourselves for this environment. How? By changing the way we incentivize our underwriters across the world, by developing a much more agile portfolio management process within XL under the leadership of our CEO, Scott Gunter.

And today, they are able to grow where they want to grow because they see attractive margins. They are able to reduce the exposure where they no longer want to have this exposure because we are not able to get the right capital returns. So how do we look at the development for each and every book. And again, 26 countries, 400 products. So there is not a single policy or a single view of the pricing environment.

For each and every book of business, are we able to grow above our capital hurdles? When the answer is yes, we need to grow, and we will grow. When the answer is no, we reduce our sensitivity to the business. That's why also when you look at the book of business 3 years ago, it was not the same as today. And the mix will keep evolving in the next 3 years.

Can I tell you today exactly where it will be in the next 3 years? No. Because again, it's a matter of agility in the underwriting teams. What I can tell you though is, one, we will protect our margin. So we grow when we see profitability. Second, that's what you saw in '25. Even if overall, when you look at the XL Insurance book, you see stable pricing. It was 0% price effect for XL Insurance in '25. You have seen growth in volumes, 3% on average. So that's exactly the indication of what I mentioned earlier.

Third, it's not just stable technical margins. We are also able to work on the other elements of the P&L. And when I look at XL Insurance, what do I see? I see permanent focus on expense discipline. You had an improvement on the expense ratio in '25. We will keep working on it in '26 in order to have high-quality earnings. Second, we are benefiting from the good reinsurance environment. We had very good reinsurance pricing at renewal this year, in particular on the property side. Obviously, you will see this impact in the P&L.

And last but not least, while not changing our asset allocation strategy, we are improving the investment income. Why? Because obviously, we are investing at a better yield as we speak, given the interest rate environment. So all of this is conducive in my view, to earnings growth at XL. And therefore, when I look again overall at the situation, I see the commercial book of AXA XL as a good opportunity for us to further expand EPS growth for the group.

Very comprehensive. If we maybe change tack slightly and go on to the hot topic, the AI conversation. One of the comments that you made on the results call, which I was particularly interested by was that you think you've already seen a one point benefit on the claims ratio from AI implementation. I was just wondering how you measure something like that and also how you think about the scale of opportunity still to come from that respect.

Well, first, I would say that I really see AI indeed as a great opportunity for us. When you look at the insurance industry, the reality is that over the decades, we have been struggling, all insurers with one basic element of our model, which is that on the one hand, you want to obviously industrialize as much as possible your processes to get more efficiency, to be more agile. And on the other hand, if there is one business where ultimately, the end customer is expecting a very personalized answer, it's insurance.

And I do have the view that it's much more the case with insurance that with any kind of other businesses, starting, for example, with banking, much more because why you want to really personalized solutions in terms of underwriting. It's true, obviously, for companies, but it's true for retail consumers as well. And also at the point of claims, that's when you expect your insurer to be extremely personalized in the way the insurer will answer to your claim. So it is a clear tension in our model.

With artificial intelligence, we finally have the technology to solve both issues at the same time, really industrialize at scale and really delivering personalized answers along the value chain. That's why I see that as a strong opportunity. But it's a technology change.

As with any kind of technology change, the name of the game will be, are you able to invest enough? Do you have the scale to really put this innovation available to anyone? Do you have the right distribution networks? Do you have the best teams to make it happen? Those questions, they are not going to change. So it's a basic, I would say, a basic metaphor that I will use now, but you take the best motor engine in the world. If you put it in the hands of the worst car manufacturer, it will yield absolutely nothing.

We have the same question with AI in the insurance industry. It's a wonderful technology, but it doesn't mean that you can succeed whatever your size, the quality of the people or the quality of your competitive moats. I do believe that with AXA, we have the right assets in order to make it happen. We have invested a lot over the years in the quality of the technology platform, fixing our legacy issues. We have a gigantic amount of data that is available in our systems. And we have very strong technical people that are able to train the AI in order to get the best answer. And you need to have this intellectual knowledge in your company if you want to make it happen. So that's the opportunity.

I will answer your question on where I see the impact very quickly. Impact is on 4 dimensions in my view. First, on distribution. You can improve the productivity of your distribution with AI. We are already doing it in several countries. One example in France, now 2,000 tied agents are helped on a daily basis with an AI assistant to get the best answer possible to the customer they have in front of them. It's improving their productivity at least by 10%. We are still working on the measurement, but we really see improvement in the productivity. That's going to be more top line. That's going to be also better answers to the customer needs. So I make the assumption that it will improve the loss ratio ultimately and the quality of the technical excellence.

Second area, pricing. That's where at this stage, we have already seen the biggest impact. That's the one point improvement in the loss ratio that we mentioned in our call when we released earnings. How so? We are investing again in the quality of the pricing, dynamic pricing, making sure that we use much more data points. I will give you a basic example. We recently acquired Prima in Italy to price any kind of risk, they are using 130 data points. The second best-performing business at AXA is our direct business in France, direct assurance. They are using 80 data points. So you already see a gap. The more data points you're going to get, the best pricing, obviously, you're going to have.

When I look at deploying that kind of AI tools, so now we are working on motor pricing. We have a tool that we are deploying across markets. It's live in France on the book of AXA France, not just the direct business. It's live in Spain. The nickname internally is Photon. We deploy this tool now in other geographies. When it's deployed, we see this one point improvement in the loss ratio against the books where we have not deployed it yet. This is the one point that we mentioned. So on pricing, it's already working. The more we will deploy it, the better you will see the impact on the loss ratio.

Third area of focus on claims management. There also, we need to work on the 2 legs. Speed. With AI, we will be much faster in the way we settle claims. We all know that in our industry, the fastest you are on claim settlements, the lower the cost of the claim. So that will be a benefit on technical excellence.

On top of that, with AI, we are already seeing improvement in fraud, abuse, waste detection. It's already yielding results across the board, in particular, again, on the retail side. We will accelerate our efforts. That will help us improve further the loss ratio there also. And last but not least, fourth area, in general, yes, we expect an impact on productivity coming from AI. Productivity in terms of speed, our people are going to be able to work swiftly through AI tools and productivity also in terms of time to market, in particular, on the technology side. And let's not forget that the bulk of our costs are coming from technology cost. If I'm able to use those costs much faster, I'm going to put solutions on the market that are more innovative, more adaptive to the customer needs. It will drive accelerated top line growth while lowering my expense ratio.

So when I look at AI again, at AXA, we believe that it's an impact that will go far beyond just the expense ratio. And that's important because the expense ratio, it is 10% of the P&L. If I can impact the rest of the P&L also with AI, the value we will unlock is going to be far greater for all of us, so that's good news. But again, and I will conclude there, the name of the game for all of us will be to make sure that we are fast enough in deploying this technology at scale. And there, I do believe that we have great assets in our hands, starting with the quality of our people, the quality of our brand and our local scale across markets with the distribution networks. That's what will make the difference on the ground.

That was an incredibly comprehensive answer.

Sorry, maybe a bit too long. I'm passionate about that front.

No, no. Absolutely. You've already answered a lot of my follow-up questions. But I think there is -- and you've touched on this around your scale, your speed to market and what have you. But there is a lot of debate in the market right now around the influence of LLMs from a distribution perspective and what have you. It sounds like you're well on top of that. But do you see -- do you perceive any real threats from AI? Or do you think you're so far ahead of the competition that actually it's not really a concern for you?

Well, of course, you need to be permanently obsessed with potential threats. And you cannot afford to rest and think that you're on the safe side. So we are extremely mindful of those evolutions. Again, I see that much more on the opportunity side than anything else. And again, look at the distribution question. It's a change in the way we will interact with our customers. But insurance is not -- has never been just a front end. It's a lot of capabilities in the end.

So the question for us is how we use AI in order to transform all of our capabilities. If customers going forward want to interact with us through an LLM platform. The question for AXA is, how do I make sure that I'm the first one on this platform. That's the question we had to solve 20 years ago when price comparison website started taking off, and we have solved it. In many of our markets, we generate 25%, 30% of our retail business through that kind of platforms.

Look at Continental Europe, we have the best divergent networks across Europe. In my opinion, it's really the best networks, but they generate today a significant bulk of their business through Google price comparison website. They capture the customer there with the help of our technology stack. And then they transform this lead into a multi-equipped customer where we create a lot of value. LLMs are not going to change the fundamental points.

The question is where you access the customer. If LLMs are taking off, we will be there. And we are already investing on that. We have deployed an engine across all of our operating companies in order to help our marketing and distribution teams assess where we are positioned in the LLMs. And when we started deploying that, guess what, in many markets, we were down the road, really like #5, 6, 7 when you were asking on ChatGPT, for example, where can I buy my motor insurance? We are catching up very quickly.

I want us to be permanently in the first row, and that's exactly. But again, today, how many of our customers are coming through those LLM platform, less than 1% of our new business. So it's a minimal question today. Tomorrow, we will adjust. That's the way we look at it. We need to be agile enough in order to find the customers where they are. Again, it will not change the many assets you need to have if you want to be a great insurer.

If I think about bigger picture, and we're coming towards the end of the current multiyear plan. You're expecting to deliver at the upper end of the 6% to 8% annualized EPS growth. I mean how should we think about that 8% effectively EPS growth going forward?

And the reason I ask that is a couple of things. One, you're painting a very positive picture around how much growth there is still, how much efficiency improvement and how much momentum there is in the business right now. And equally, I look at your current 6% to 8% target, and it is towards the lower end of what your large cap peers are targeting as well. So how should we think about the momentum of the business given you're delivering 8% growth right now going into...

So I don't have any scope to share with you today, and we will all meet on September 21 for the next plan. When you look at us, I believe that the way you should think about us is a question of predictability and consistency. That's what we are committed with Thomas and the management team. That's what we are committed to, predictability, consistency, no surprise, being sure that we deliver year after year.

I do believe that this is what we have delivered over the past 3 to 4 years extremely consistently. Look at the quality again of the earnings in '25. We gave a clear guidance on '26 for the next plan. Let's meet on September 21.

I was hoping for a bit more of that. So I mean, if we stick with the sort of bigger picture and from a balance sheet perspective as well, your solvency right now is very, very strong, and it's going to get even stronger with the benefit of the solvency review. I think pro forma, you're north of 230%. Admittedly, that's not necessarily deployable cash capital, but it's a very strong balance sheet. How can you -- what can you do with that balance sheet that you're not already doing to the benefit of investors, do you think?

So first, going back to our AI debate, a very strong balance sheet is critical in general in order to gain market share also in terms of brand perception and the quality of the solutions we can offer to our customers. It's true in the commercial business, but more and more, I believe it's becoming extremely important also on the retail side.

And by the way, if you take the view that many retail customers are going to ask more questions before getting an insurance product, having a strong balance sheet is going to be one of the elements that I believe LLMs will take into consideration when they ultimately make a recommendation. That was not the case on price comparison websites. So again, it's a competitive strength for us. That's the first way we look at it.

Second way, we want to be above 200%. We have been extremely clear on that. Everything we have above that is providing us with additional flexibility. You should look at it as a global picture. Ultimately, for example, that can give us flexibility on the leverage side, we'll see down the road. But it's, again, good news to have a strong balance sheet. We will maintain the discipline, and we have also been very clear on, I think, the quality of our distribution policy. You said it, but I want to reiterate that.

Ultimately, this also strong balance sheet is helping us grow organically in each and every of our local markets. And today, we have also sufficient resources to do that while having the good distribution policy we have.

And if I were to play devil's advocate. And one question mark I've sort of toyed with in my own mind is your returns to shareholders. So you've got a 75% payout ratio, the 60% plus 15% from the share buyback, which is consistent with what we're seeing elsewhere. But when I look at it from a free cash flow perspective and how much cash you're paying up to the holding company net of central costs and what have you, beyond what you're paying to shareholders, there isn't huge amounts left on an annual basis.

So you're not building up a stock of cash at the company, whereas if I were to do the same analysis for some of your competitors, they are generating more cash, which gives them a bit more flexibility potentially. So how are you thinking about that given that there isn't much room for maneuver from a remittance perspective? Is there more to do from a remittance standpoint? Or how should we think about that?

Well, first, I would say that we are happy with the current level of remittance from our local operations. We are very much in line with the targets we gave you in terms of free cash flows, and we are happy with the 80% on average we are having year after year. It's, again, helping us to keep the necessary resources at local level to fuel organic growth. And ultimately, that's what we need in terms of free cash flow in order to be able to meet the distribution policy we committed to.

So we are very happy with this situation. You're right. We are not creating a huge amount of cash at holding level. And I believe it's good news because it's helping us maintain the right discipline in terms of distribution policy, and it has been on purpose designed that way, precisely because we wanted to give you a clear message that our intent is not to have, I don't know what kind of available cash at holding level, where then you would start wondering, are they going to do "crazy things with that?" You have your answer.

Very clear. If I -- one area of the business that we've not touched on yet is the Life side of things. And I think it's fair to say that in the past, there have been some pressures on the traditional savings part of the business there. But more recently, new business momentum is definitely starting to gain some traction.

How should we think about that in terms of translating into CSM growth and ultimately, earnings growth for the Life business? Because on an underlying basis, again, your Life CSM looks -- growth looks slightly lower than your peers. So how should we expect to see the momentum accelerating from here?

So I would start by making a cautionary statement in front of you for all of us. I'm not entirely convinced that IFRS 17 drastically improved our ability to compare with each other. I tend to even believe the opposite, if I'm honest. So this being said, when I look at the Life business, in the end, it's, in my opinion, not that complicated.

You need to look at the level of reserves and you need to look at the level of margins. Year after year, are we able to at least maintain margins, if not improve them? And are we able to grow our reserves? That's exactly what we did in '25. That's what we will continue to do in '26. That's what we will continue to do going forward. Work on the margins, and you see that in our indicators, work on the level of reserves. The name of the game there is to make sure that net flows are growing.

We have now really built the right franchise to go back to net flows growth. It's true that over the past 5 years, we had our homework to do in order to reposition our Life & Savings business. But now we are in the right position in order to grow. Net flows have grown in '25. We will see that also in '26, how stronger commercial momentum in the geographies where we have strong distribution networks in order to distribute our Life & Savings solutions, mostly France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Japan and Hong Kong, and also better persistency because our book is now positioned exactly where we want it to be with good level of margins. So that's the way I look at the Life business. If we keep working in this direction, you will see improvement in the CSM, you will see growth in earnings.

Just one element that I believe is important. Let's not forget that a lot of the elements that you see on the CSM are extremely dependent on the market you're operating in. So for example, NBCSM, you look at it on the face value. For AXA, it was 3% growth. If you normalize that for interest rate, we, in particular, have a significant business, for example, in Japan. If you normalize that for interest rate, it's 5% growth in '25. That's the organic potential, the real operational performance of the business. 5% NBCSM growth, I believe, is good. It's healthy. And again, it's in line with predictable, consistent earnings growth year after year also on this business. So I see the situation as being healthy.

We need to keep improving quality of the solutions and distribution network depths on that front, quality of the solutions. The good news for AXA is that we are now a pure insurance player. We no longer have the question, oh, for the quality of my asset management solution, do I need to take into account other constraints? Now we sold our asset manager.

We have a strong partner that is helping us improve the quality of the solution on asset places where we were not best-in-class. I think about equity, I think about ETF. But we have also more freedom to work with competitive third-party asset managers. In the end, what I want is the best solutions for our customers. So we have more freedom on the innovation side, and that will help us drive better proposition for our customers.

On top of that, on the distribution side, I believe that where we need to improve is third-party distribution. On Life, in particular, we have high-quality proprietary distribution, but we can do more on third-party IFAs, brokers across the board, and we are investing a lot on the quality of our platform for those distributors.

Excellent. Thank you very much. I'm very conscious of time. So maybe let's open it up to the audience, see if there's any questions, please raise your hand and wait for a mic. Question from Mark.

It's Mark from BDL. Just I noticed that at the beginning, you were talking about efficiency and you had referenced the head office costs, group central costs. Can you just maybe expand on what you're thinking there in terms of the potential?

Well, we will on September 21. But I do see as one of the levers we have indeed for the future, and it's a healthy question to ask ourselves. We can always generate more productivity also with our corporate center. So I see that as an opportunity.

Okay. With that, I think we can end it there. Guillaume, thank you very much.

Thank you all very much.

Very interesting conversation.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

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, Strategy, Finance, Underwriting and Risk and Group's Technology; Alban de Mailly Nesle, CFO; 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 and 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 and 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 and certainly a crisis that have been lasting for several weeks.

But we also know, unfortunately, that these types of events are becoming increasingly frequent. And 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 are 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 fore 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 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. And 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. Now 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 at 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. But 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. And 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 of 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 2 examples. The first one is the acquisition of Prima in Italy. Prima, tech insurer, which we acquired in 2025, well is strengthening our distribution capabilities in Italy, but more broadly in Europe. This acquisition provides us with the 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 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 a 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 carrying 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. Also, we are a major investor, EUR 40 billion each year we invest into the economy. And 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 is -- it comes with EUR 60 million per year. And this allows us to sustain projects that have an impact through the 4 major pillars for us, which is heritage, nature, science and inclusion. We have also confirmed our commitments towards 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 AXA Mutual. 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 4 pillars. First of all, turn AI into a major lever, not only in terms of efficiency, but also for better customer experience. Then, turn AXA into more efficient to show agility in an environment which is constantly on the move. Thirdly, we want to allocate even more our capital towards growth opportunities that create the highest level of value. And lastly, we want to shore up and strengthen our resilience even further, thanks to good diversification and to a solid balance sheet. 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, will 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. And 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 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. So 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 and 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 8 countries with operations, which are performing extremely well. So 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.

Now digging deeper into each and every business line, starting with P&C. For the Property & 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 prior year, better. So all in all, underlying earnings growing by 9% and which have been driven by improved business across the board as well as the intrinsic trends fueling our business operations. Now how have we generated this performance in fiscal 2025? Well, 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 region.

In Property & 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 3 business areas follow different trends, and we have to adapt our momentum depending on the reality of the market. For retail and mid-market and SME insurance business in 2025, we were able to keep improving our margins, which operate at the 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 [ 1.7 million ] new contracts over the year, which is a historic high. Four, 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 more competitive market.

Now as you can see, this is the 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 of 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. So 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 mentioned 2, 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. Now 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 & 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.

Now moving on to life, health and savings insurance. The momentum here as well has been very positive. And 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 3 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. Why -- 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 cost connected with claims management and the services we are offering our clients. Now in the field of protection, we keep accelerating the pace with very strong sales momentum, especially in Japan, in Switzerland in fiscal 2025. And this was driven by our ability to offer solutions, which combine with savings products and services. And talking about savings, in savings, our goal is very bold and high to go back on a concurring 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 this achievement.

Well, 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 Manager is now capable of offering even more comprehensive solutions, especially on ETFs and on the side of equities. Also, 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. So 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, and 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.

So in a nutshell, in Life & Health business operations, we've been expanding, growing our revenues. All engines are firing strongly across all geographies and underlying earnings significantly, up 7%. So 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%. So extremely strong growth to reach historic highs. So 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 markets, 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. Now 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. And 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. And 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 Smart in AXA. And our tied agents and their teams can better support and service their clients when they come to them for advice on an insurance-related product. 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 service 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 4x the same type of information, making us more efficient, more excellent and 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 talent will be a critical success factor. In the last few months, we've recruited more than 900 data scientists as well as data engineers. And 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.

So 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. And the rules we apply day in, day out are a key asset to move faster and to pioneer the way in this transformational change. So excellent 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, all our -- 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 nat 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. But on the whole, when you look at our geographies, the year was a bit 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, underwritings and how we manage claims and our own costs. So our margin improved by 1 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. And 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. And so 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. So there's a mechanics here about improvement of our investments. So 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 & Health business, 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. So we can see the commercial momentum in which we are headed. But beyond this, our margins also improved as well in that sector. First of all, in terms of Protection & Health, our margins improved by 20 basis points. But 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 0.1 billion and 70 basis points of margin it cost us.

So in health, otherwise, in life, otherwise, would have increased by 90 basis points. So in 2026, we will try to correct that Mexican issue. But 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. And so there are margins that also are higher. Therefore, we have a 6% growth in savings, whilst there are 15% -- where growth is 15% in Health & Protection. So there again, a very good result on the whole in Health & Life, growing by 7% our earnings.

Now looking at the whole -- across the group, next slide. So 9% in P&C, 7% in Life & 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 costs remained stable. So growth of our underlying 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%. And 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 the target one. So an excellent result.

Lastly, a few final words about the solvency factor. We looked at our commercial momentum, our ability to improve our margin. But what is important is our financial solidity because it is important for our long-term efficiency and the trust coming from our clients. So 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 into the calculation of solvency. That's why in the 1st of January 2026, what remains of subordinated debt from that time pass falls away and comes and cost [ us 10 ] solvency level. So 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 found generally that probably there was too much prudence in calibrating Solvency II. So 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. So on an equal basis -- on a like-for-like basis, we will be at 232% solvency on a pro forma basis. So very solid. So I would like -- I wanted to end this with this. So 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 that AXA France is one of the essential engines of the group. So -- and I'm delighted to share with you what makes us unique in our market at AXA France.

Now 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 & Protection areas, be it in property casualty and 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. So 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, and we saw the appetence 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. And we would like to take this opportunity to extend my support and warm thoughts to the victims of the Nils storm in France as well as thank all our teams and tied agents who have been working with the victims right from the beginning.

Now 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 1 household out of 5 with business leaders and trusting us with the need to protect their properties with the Property & Casualty coverage and as well with the employee benefits. So 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 a 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.

So fiscal '25 was an excellent year, as I said, in my introductory remarks with excellent performance being posted. So revenues up by 6% to EUR 31 billion. P&C business expanding, up 7% year-on-year and Health & Protection business up 4% year-on-year with Savings & Pensions business growing 7%. Now revenues are at their highest level for the last 10 years. Now underlying earnings reached EUR 2.2 billion at its highest level. And this performance is driven by all of our business lines. So 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, 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. So very strong performance to shore up our leadership position.

Now above and beyond, this fine performance, I want to review our commitments, which is a very important area. Number one, on the customer front, and then we'll be talking about climate and prevention. Now on the customer front, fiscal '25 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, and more than 5 million policyholders today can benefit from legal protection and assistance as well as emergency rehousing so that they place themselves 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 heal 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 the city and town counselors sometimes are at a loss to meet these technical requirements, and we are 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 the 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. So we come in support to support this new scientific progress through this initiative. Now these commitments have made our teams proud, and we 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 society is playing a key role in. Thank you very much.

And 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, and 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. And 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 whilst creating value for our shareholders and our employees and of course, for our clients. Thank you.

And we'll now move on to your questions.

Let's start in the room.

[indiscernible], newspaper. My question bears upon the development of AI, which could increase competition. Could you explain to us several things? First of all, describe a 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. And perhaps maybe could you specify one figure? You gave a combined ratio of 90.6% in P&C. Could you give us -- could you break it down the cost ratio, et cetera, and the cost in terms of claims? And regarding the latter, could you specify the changes when it comes to the nat cats in terms of the rates there?

Very well. You have a third question? That's one single question. It's chiefly on costs. So on the first question, I will quickly make an introduction and the best thing will, after that, to go into concrete examples. And certainly, Patrick Cohen is in this room, who is heading Europe and Mathieu Godart, who is heading AXA France. And 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. And then Alban, could you give us the specifics about the combined ratio in terms of costs and claims and the nat cats?

So 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 2 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. And here, the distribution centers are key. And 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 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. So that's why having good data banks and also have the ability with AI to use nonstructured data. For example, if you 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 you 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 and 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 2 areas on which we are working as it comes to the implementation of AI. Patrick, first, maybe and then Mathieu, can you give us even more concrete examples of your 2 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. And 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 funds 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 clients. We are using agentic AI, which in a predictive manner are able to identify, detect needs and basically automatically create e-mail and correspondence and communication, which are totally customized to 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, so 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 a piece of document. This is being done in Germany, Italy and 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 clients, 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 and speak with them, listen to them, satisfying the clients better and making them more effective, more productive.

Thank you, Pratick. Mathieu?

Thank you. Well, first, the examples that Patrick has just reviewed are examples of daily use. I will focus on one area which is important. It is that of technology. Well, we've obviously been using AI to refine and customize our pricing schemes. Patrick 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 more profitable growth. Combating fraud is of great importance as well because AI is not only -- sorry, being used by corporates, but private hackers and fraudsters use it. So 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%, i.e., 0.4% broken down into 0.3% of improved current loss ratio, 0.3% of improved the cost ratio and 0.4% of improved nat cat factor. And since we consider 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%. So thank you.

We have someone right. Let's go from right.

Thierry [indiscernible] for the News Insurance Magazine. I have 2 questions. The first to pick up on what my friend here asked about AI. You mentioned "massive investment". So 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. Can you speak about these items, please?

Thank you, Thierry. So 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 is for capital investments. The rest is for the running cost of our IT systems. Now 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 21st of 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.

So we are accelerating this 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. And among these levers and pools, I included all the operating excellence drivers and measures with respect to offshoring, some assignments, greater disciplines in the purchasing and procurement so that we've generated efficiencies, and Alban mentioned how it impact the P&C combined ratio. And these efficiencies are higher than the additional capital expenditures we'll be investing. So 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 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 CEMAC countries, in other words, Senegal, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Gabon. In addition to that, we are in Egypt and in Nigeria. So our positioning is highly focused, which is growing significantly with a lot of success in the offering. And certainly, a stake in Africa rate or participation in 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 in the -- 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. And this is why I believe that Africa will be a significant -- very significant continent for Europe. This is why we are preparing this wave of growth, which hopefully will come one day for Europe.

[indiscernible] 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. Now 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?

And 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?

And now my last question is about the sales several years ago. That was the life insurance business and the pensions in runoff 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 specific 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 they are in. And then I will take the first and third question. Mathieu?

As regards news, it's 2 types of events we are facing. On the one hand, there is a storm, the damage created by the storm. And on the other hand, you have floods. It's important to differentiate these 2 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 time to estimate the damage when people make statements, it's much longer for very pragmatic reasons because you have to wait for -- you have no longer any floods so that we can send experts to be able to assess the damage that face -- that clients are facing. So 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 tide that fell from the roof doesn't -- is not so bad as having water in your kitchen, in your home.

And to supplement this relative to the figures that were announced by the market, what do you think about? 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 2 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 the 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.

Now the 2 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 insurers in Germany, and it's only part of it because that's a former vintagous 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, but 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. And that portfolio, when you look at it, it's very well capitalized with Solvency II, which is stand-alone, which is very high.

And today, there's no reason really to think again about a sale. This is why you noticed 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. And 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. So we're focusing on the organic aspects. I'm not asking myself this question. This is why -- because 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. We -- 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. And I think the same thing in most cases, should occur again. As 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 and innovative companies based on AI and on the LLM models will be helpful. And this is why in order to do better this time compared to the digital revolution, we must, from the very outside, try to find partnerships to benefit together from the positive effect of AI on our processes, on the customer interaction. And along those lines, then, of course, we are working with all the model providers, in particular, with Mistral.

[indiscernible] magazine. 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 BPI Defense Fund? Have you been ramping up to invest into these funds jointly to the BPCE Group? And with respect to the health business, Mr. Godart, you spoke about the partial reimbursement of genomic test to avoid a traumatic chemotherapy. To the best of my knowledge, you are among the rare insurance companies to offer this and the former French Minister for Health, Yannick Leder had said that if these tests were being covered by insurance companies, then the budget of the social security system could be cut? And 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.

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. And 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 military capacity of the country. So all stakeholders need to be fully aligned in the defense ecosystems, and this is not necessarily the case today. So 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. Well, 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 cost is of great importance. And we need to move from a therapy-focused model to a prevention-focused model. And 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. So 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 point in your question, madam, because we sometimes hear that the national security system competes with the private insurance companies and the mutual companies. Now the question is not who does what, but the question really should be how could we collectively better do things together because all the efforts made by the private companies, combined with all the efforts made by the national systems should compound to improve the situation.

Now time is running. Let's take a last question online. And then for all other questions by people in this auditorium, we may again exchange around the drink or coffee. Last question.

[indiscernible] from Maximilian [indiscernible] of Plateau. 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 3 questions. So Patrick, if you could talk about the result in Germany. And Nancy, if you could talk about the reinsurers and the risk appetite. And I think the second question is relatively easy to answer. When you look at the insurance market, in particular in Europe, it is today very fragmented still. So 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.

Thank you Thomas. I think we're still kind of this configuration as it stands. I thank you for your question because it gives me the opportunity to warmly congratulate the team in Germany for an outstanding year. I'll start by saying that the German team passed the EUR 1 billion underlying earnings result this year. This is quite an achievement. It's a major improvement, big, 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 want to highlight 2 areas where I think from a new business standpoint, Germany stood out through product innovation, which are life and savings 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. And 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 the frontrunner in AXA. So a big, big year for them and an excellent result.

And it also shows you our philosophy on talent. We always try to find successors who are better than their predecessors. I only made it until EUR 520 million result. Nancy?

Thank you. So regarding the question around reinsurance. So the reinsurance market still is quite profitable. You will see the announcements from the major reinsurers. However, over the past 2 years, they've been targeting their focus on the types of risk they'll bring in, increasing their attachment points and the 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 in a company like AXA, who is 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. And so [indiscernible].

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AXA Full Year 2025 Earnings Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Anu Venkataraman. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to AXA's Full Year '25 Results Presentation. Presenting the results today are our Group CEO, Thomas Buberl; Global Head of Finance, Strategy, Underwriting, Risk and Technology, Guillaume Borie; and our Group CFO, Alban de Mailly Nesle. In addition, we also have in the room, Patrick Cohen, CEO of AXA European Markets & Health; [indiscernible], CEO of AXA France; and Scott Gunter, CEO of AXA XL. With that, I turn it over to Thomas.

Thank you, Anu. Good morning to all of you, and thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results presentation. As you have seen from the numbers, we had a record performance with the group that is now positioned exactly where we want it to be, a pure insurance player with every business and every geography contributing positively to both the top and the bottom line. I'm extremely pleased with these strong results across the board. You see that the top line has grown by 6%, which is reflecting the strength of our franchise.

You also have seen that the underlying earnings per share have grown by 8%, which is the top of our target range. This all happened while we were enhancing our reserve prudence and we're absorbing significant for example, the adverse foreign exchange development we had last year and also the temporary dilution from the sale of AXA. All of this happens on a very strong balance sheet with EUR 5.6 billion cash at the holding company and a Solvency II ratio that remains high post grandfathering of the debt at 215%. We expect a further 17% uplift from the Solvency II revision that will kick in on the 1st of January 2027. This is a very solid position and in the current environment, also a needed position to absorb shocks. The return on equity is at 16%, which enables us to fund organic growth and to sustain an attractive payout to our shareholders. We have also now completed the EUR 3.8 billion share buyback that was related to the sale of AXA IM.

So in total, we are very well positioned, strongly capitalized, and we are delivering consistent high-quality growth in the top and the bottom line. When we look at this year and based on this record performance, I am very confident that we can deliver underlying earnings per share for this year at the top end of our target range. If we move to the next slide, our performance this year reflects a very disciplined execution on all fronts, which are growth, margin and efficiency, while at the same time, we are continuing to invest in our business. The top line growth, as I mentioned earlier, was 6% and is well balanced across all lines of business. At the same time, we also increased our margins, which reflects a disciplined growth, a deployment of machine learning and predictive AI, in particular, in pricing and underwriting and also a reduced leakage in claims settlement through better analytics and tighter processes. We have also made good progress in delivering efficiency through technology and automation.

The underlying earnings, if you exclude AXA IM, which we sold and closed by the middle of last year, grew by plus 9% on a constant currency basis. More importantly, these earnings are of very high quality. We do not have to fix any business anymore or have benefited from any turnarounds or onetime effects. In fact, we have taken advantage of strong earnings to reinforce prudence across all lines of business. What I would particularly like to highlight is the P&C performance. This is a stellar performance, 9% earnings growth, resilient pricing, including XL, a lower current year loss ratio, excluding nat cat, a reduced expense ratio, strong investment income and as I mentioned earlier, further reserve prudence. The Life & Health results are also of high quality. They have grown by 7% in earnings. We see a strong commercial momentum.

We see higher net flows across all geographies. And what was important for us in 2025 was to particularly work on the short-term technical results. And you've seen that there is a 15% increase, while we also have a strong CSM release that is driven by reserve growth and improved margin on our in-force portfolio. This has also allowed us to build additional prudence on both technical experience and fund distribution. So we are delivering strong earnings growth in line with our commitments while further strengthening the resilience of our earnings across all lines of business. This performance reflects the quality of a well-diversified, strong insurance franchise and the deliberate strategic actions that we have taken over the last decade to reposition AXA and strengthen the execution. So we are very confident that we can sustain this performance.

And as I said, my view for this year is that we can clearly deliver an underlying earnings per share at the top end of our range. If we go to the next slide and take a step back and look at the industry, it is in very good shape with profitability and capital being at strong levels. The insurance industry is certainly also benefiting from structural growth drivers that support sustainable long-term expansion across all lines of business. When you look, for example, in retail, we are growing protection -- we see growing protection gaps from under insurance, especially amongst the modest income customers. And this is obviously fueling demand for more affordable and accessible coverage.

When you look at emerging risks such as autonomous vehicles, cyber, data centers, energy transition, these are creating new and attractive growth avenues in the commercial and specialty lines. When you think about life and health, we are confronted today with aging demographics. We have pressure on public systems, and we have demand for private health, protection and retirement solutions, in particular, in the countries where public systems have not delivered. And if you think about the U.K., this is probably a very illustrative case. AXA today is well positioned to benefit from all of these opportunities because we have a broad and strong distribution footprint to capture these opportunities.

For example, we are expanding in direct distribution, and we are forging partnerships to reach modest income customers. And in particular, in Europe, this has been a very successful journey over the last year. We have deep technical expertise to underwrite risks profitably. AXA XL has been ensuring autonomous driving technology for some time now, and we are amongst very few insurers that have the engineering and risk management expertise to underwrite, for example, larger data centers and digital infrastructure.

Our scale, and it was always very important for us to be in fewer countries, but have scale enables us to deliver competitive products to our customers. And we obviously -- given that scale continues to increase, we intend to continue to drive down our unit costs as we go along. Importantly, we have a very trusted brand, and we are and will remain a long-term partner to our customers. So if you look forward, there is plenty of opportunities ahead, and we are well placed to capture them.

And my team and I are very excited about the future growth opportunities. If we go to the next slide, Page 6, and looking at this year, our priorities are obviously twofold because on the one hand side, we have to deliver the current plan. And as I said, I'm very confident that we will be delivering at the top end of our range so that we have a good delivery for this current 3-year plan. But on the other hand, we also lay the foundations for the future success. As a CEO, I have to identify and execute a few decisive moves to secure our long-term competitiveness. Today, my biggest strategic priority is to continue to transform our business.

When we talk about transformation, we don't talk about moonshots. Our goal is really together to create a consistent and sustainable value for our shareholders. And obviously, in this equation, our customers do remain at the center of everything. This transformation, I would like to design with my team along 4 dimensions. First, we see AI as an absolute enabling technology that can create tremendous benefits for companies that can leverage it well. For us, AI is an efficiency play, but not only because AI will change how customers access insurance. It will change the personalization in products, and it will also change the customer experience.

And so we want to be strongly positioned for the shift. Secondly, AI is already improving pricing accuracy, underwriting quality and claims management because -- we have a lot of data, often also a lot of unstructured data and AI will help us to leverage them not only for the underwriting decisions to make today, but also using all the historic data we've got. And AI is also absolutely key to continue to develop our own tech cycles when you think about further developing our tech landscape, when you think about making sure that our data foundations are stronger. And so we work with very tangible cases that are now ready to scale.

Secondly, AI also enables us to increase the efficiency and agility of our business so we can adapt to this constantly changing environment. As you know from the past, AXA is a company that is not afraid of change. We have a history of making bold moves, and we will continue now making these bold moves in a more -- in an environment that is more driven by organic development. Third, we intend to enhance our capital allocation discipline even more to focus on the highest return growth and the best investment opportunities.

Finally, and that is very important in a period like this, we aim to build resilience to drive greater predictability and reliability in our performance. You've seen that over the years, we have strengthened our diversification enormously, not only just across geographies or lines of business, but also across our customer segments and distribution. And we will continue this journey to ensure that we always have a robust balance sheet and a robust risk management framework. Our ambition is to be a winner in our industry, the preferred insurer for our customers, a place that can not only attract the best talents, but can also compound great value for our shareholders. Thank you. And I'm now handing over to Guillaume Borie.

Thank you very much, Thomas, and good morning to all of you. It's a pleasure being with you this morning for my first time presenting the group results in my new position and doing it on a day where we announced excellent results. As Thomas mentioned, the group is very well positioned today. And therefore, our priority should be to safeguard this performance and where possible, take it to the next level. We will do that starting from a solid platform. As you can see on this page, arguably, our businesses are firing up on all cylinders.

All our businesses, all our geographies have delivered excellent performance in '25, both on top line and bottom line. Specifically, we are particularly happy with AXA XL results. Earnings are up 9% with stable, excellent margins and selective profitable growth. XL is a highly diversified franchise, both across geographies and by line of business, each with its own dynamics. So what those results are demonstrating is our ability to capture profitable growth opportunities while managing the cycle and therefore, growing our earnings.

On this page, you also see that France is an excellent performer. Clearly, it's a core engine for the group. And those results are showing our resilience in the current environment in this country. And you also see that our businesses in Europe across 8 countries where we have solid positions keep delivering consistently with strong contribution to the group performance.

Let me now turn to our P&C businesses. Thomas insisted earlier on our disciplined execution on all fronts. And when I look at P&C in '25, for us, it's the perfect example of this discipline, consistent execution to deliver strong performance. Earnings are up 9%, but what's most important is that we are improving in all ways, attritional ratio down, expense ratio down, lower PYDs, higher investment income, and we enhanced our reserve buffers. So how have we delivered this altogether?

We are following an operational playbook that is adapted to each of our 3 businesses in P&C that have more or less each the same size. Look at retail and SME mid-market, a year of excellent performance. Those businesses together represent 2/3 of our P&C business. And in those businesses, we delivered margin expansion while gaining market share in a favorable pricing environment. That's particularly true for the retail business with strong net new contracts and further improvement in an already excellent profitability.

Looking ahead on those businesses with those margins at excellent level, we will focus on further strengthening distribution to improve customer retention and enlarge the addressable market. It goes with reinforcing our proprietary agent network, further investing in our digital capabilities, but also forging new strategic distribution partnerships Look at what we did in Europe in '25 with [indiscernible] in Spain or Lloyds Bank in the U.K., it does give us access to new customer pools to further boost our growth. And last but not least, in retail, we are strengthening our direct channels.

It complements our excellent traditional distribution networks, and it helps us better meet evolving customer expectations. As you know, '25 was the year of Prima's acquisition. AXA XL on the other hand, and as we mentioned earlier, earnings are up 9% and again, with an excellent underlying performance. No PYDs excellent results, clear demonstration of our ability to grow and best manage the cycle. I would like to make something very clear on XL. Yes, the commercial market has become more competitive. But yes, also, we see attractive profitable opportunities we can capture, thanks to the diversity of our book. Thomas mentioned it, we are a major player in energy transition, in ensuring complex engineering risks, in ensuring autonomous vehicle technology and so on and so forth.

So we expect growth to continue on this path in '26 and beyond, and it will support profitability at XL. Alban will come back to that in a minute. So we are entering the next years with our P&C business from a position of strength with all businesses contributing best-in-class margins and distribution reinforced. But we should not be complacent with this strong position. We do see further levers that will help us sustain profit growth going forward. And the good news is that those levers are fully in our hands.

First, our expense ratio is already competitive, but we believe we can go further. We remain focused on further margin expansion through efficiency gains. This has already contributed in '25. It will become an even more important driver in the coming years in this business. Second, clearly, investment income will be a tailwind. It's supported by higher asset base given our strong growth as well as obviously higher reinvestment yields. And last but not least, as part of our data and AI road map, we will upgrade our pricing, underwriting and claims management processes.

Already today, we have realized 1 point of loss ratio benefit from our AI initiatives. This will be a major lever to ensure that we are well positioned in the future and further enhance our technical excellence. Moving now to Life & Health. There also, it's been a year of disciplined execution, disciplined execution to sustain earnings growth. You see solid performance of 7% growth and where basically we did what we said we would do. In the long-term business, '25 shows the first tangible outcomes of our strategy to rejuvenate our products and distribution. Life is back. Net inflows improved significantly across all geographies, and this supports CSM release over time with early benefits already visible in '25.

Alban will come back to it. On the short-term business, we grew our technical margin by 15%, while at the same time, as Thomas indicated, we absorbed the EUR 0.1 billion impact of a legislative change on recoverability of VAT in Mexico. So what does it demonstrate on the short-term business? The very fact that we have now a resilient health portfolio. The health business grew earnings by 17% in '25 despite this headwind. It does reflect the benefits of disciplined pricing, underwriting and claims management initiatives taken over the last 2 years through our dedicated health business unit. So from this strong year, we are well positioned to capture the increasing opportunities we see and that were underlined by Thomas, a rising demand and rising protection gaps, both on retirement and savings and on health and protection.

We believe that in Life & Health, we have laid solid foundations to capture profitable growth going forward. In retirement, it will come with rejuvenated offer and complementing our product range with protection features. To that extent, with the sale of AXA IM, we can now work in open architecture and source best-in-class asset management products to best match our customer needs. This long-term partnership with BNP will broaden our product offerings, notably in equities and ETF, but it will also enable us to access competitive products of other third-party asset manager. This will drive future growth of our savings business.

When you go to health and protection over the coming years, we believe there also that we can further enhance underwriting, reduce the impact of fraud waste and abuse through artificial intelligence and that those initiatives will further strengthen our competitive position. Before leaving the floor to Alban and to conclude, I would like to insist on the quality of our execution in '25. We believe this is the best tribute to the strong commitment of our teams across the world.

Our commitment to deliver our plan with strong discipline, our commitment to best leverage and further transform our unique insurance franchise. And yes, our commitment to deliver sustainable, predictable, consistent earnings growth. We will follow the same discipline and leverage the same commitment to take us to the next level and sustain in the next years, our performance with a strong focus on execution in 3 main areas where we see strong potential and again, 3 areas where we have everything in our hands. We do want to have an even more ambitious tech and AI agenda while so to unlock our organic growth potential.

We do want to extract more efficiencies from a deeper operational transformation that we are extremely committed to execute. And last but not least, we do want to continue to maintain our discipline on capital management. Thank you very much for your attention, and I'm happy to leave the floor to Alban.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to all. So let me now go through the key numbers of 2025, starting with P&C. So as Thomas and Guillaume said, we delivered excellent P&C results with earnings up 9%. And as was said, we achieved these results while enhancing reserve prudence. All the drivers, growth, technical margin, expenses and investment income contributed to the earnings growth. So first, premiums.

Premiums grew by 5% with a good balance between pricing and volume and with strong contribution of all our lines of business. P&C combined ratio improved further to 90.6% with a 30 bps improvement in undiscounted attritional loss ratio, a further 30 bps improvement in the expense ratio, reflecting our efficiency measures. Nat cat stood at 3.4%, below the 4.5 points budget for the second year in a row. And we had a low reliance on PYD at minus 1.1 points. So all our lines of business are performing well. In P&C Personal and in Commercial Lines, excluding AXA XL, the undiscounted attritional loss ratio and expense ratio improved by 90 bps in both lines.

Going forward, we expect sustained growth and further margin improvement in Personal Lines and SME and mid-market. And you know that both represent together 2/3 of our P&C business. At AXA XL Insurance, margins were stable with a combined ratio at 91% with no PYDs, demonstrating our ability to grow while managing the cycle. At AXA XL Re, the combined ratio remains at a very attractive level of 81%. Overall, earnings grew by 9% at AXA XL and 18% at AXA XL Insurance specifically. Investment income was also a strong contributor, reflecting a higher asset base and reinvestment yields, more than offsetting the EUR 0.2 billion mechanical increase in unwind. So overall, high-quality results with good growth in top line, improvement in technical margins and expenses and growth in investment income.

And this growth in profitability was off a clean base with no businesses in turnaround. Moving on to Life & Health. Premiums were up 8%, earnings were up 7%, and both our short-term and long-term businesses delivered strong performance. In short-term Life and Health, insurance revenues were up 10%. Technical margins grew by 15%, while absorbing EUR 0.1 billion impact from a legislative change in the recoverability of VAT in Mexico. Adjusting for this impact, the combined ratio would have improved by 80 bps. These results demonstrate the quality of our health franchise. And we expect margins to continue to expand as we earn the benefits of underwriting and claims management actions.

On top, we expect to see better profitability in Mexico as we take actions to offset the impact of the VAT change. In long-term Life & Health, our efforts to rejuvenate the savings business are paying off. We see solid momentum with strong top line growth and improving net flows. In Life, in particular, our new business CSM was up 4%, but that's, in fact, plus 6% if you strip out the negative impacts of the higher interest rates on the discounted value of new business CSM, and we are very happy with those growth numbers.

CSM release grew by 8%. This reflects reserve growth from positive net flows from the annual interest credited to policyholders in general account and the favorable impact of equity market returns in unit-linked. On top, 2025 CSM release was rebased to reflect better margins. But this is a good base from which to grow, but at a pace more in line with our guidance of greater than 3%. We took advantage of strong CSM release growth to be prudent in fund distribution and long-term technical performance.

So overall, very good performance in both short-term and long-term businesses, and we are confident in sustaining this momentum. Moving on to net income. Overall, at group level, we delivered plus 6% underlying earnings growth. Excluding AXA IM, underlying earnings growth is plus 9%. Net income obviously benefited from the EUR 2.2 billion gain from the sale of AXA IM, and that was partly offset by unfavorable impact from FX and change in fair value of derivatives.

Overall, plus 8% growth in underlying earnings per share at the top end of our target range. And we achieved this strong performance while enhancing reserve prudence, as I said, and absorbing headwinds, minus 2 points from FX and minus 1 point from the temporary dilution from the sale of AXA IM. And finally, moving on to Solvency II. Our Solvency II ratio was 224% at the end of '25. And as you know, as of January 1, 2026, we have the end of the grandfathering period. So the pro forma Solvency II ratio at January 1, '26 was 215%.

But in addition, we currently estimate an uplift of 17 points from the Solvency II revision. This estimate is based on the January 1, '26 balance sheet and may obviously slightly change depending on the conditions that will prevail in Q1 '27 when Solvency II revision will come into effect. We do not expect the Solvency II revision to impact normalized capital generation. Our robust balance sheet provides us with additional capital flexibility, notably to reduce leverage. So overall, we are very pleased with our 2025 performance. We had solid delivery on top line and bottom line across all segments.

The group is in excellent shape with strong underlying trends across our businesses. And we are confident to deliver at the upper end of the 6% to 8% target range in 2026. So going into 2026, what are the trends to have in mind? P&C. So at AXA XL, we have room to grow earnings in 2026, reflecting the attractive growth opportunities while maintaining stable margins ex cat. In P&C Retail and in P&C Commercial Lines ex XL, pricing remains supportive, and we see good growth opportunities. We expect margins to further improve ex cat.

And as a reminder, our normalized cat load is 4.5%. We also expect financial results to grow in 2026, reflecting further increase in investment income, albeit at a slower pace than in 2025 and stable insurance finance expense at minus EUR 1.4 billion. In Life & Health, in short-term business, we expect revenue growth and expansion in margins, including from the progressive recovery in Mexico, reflecting the actions that we have taken to offset the VAT change. In long-term business, improving net flows trend in Life from commercial momentum and better persistency will fuel earnings growth over time.

We will continue to drive efficiency in 2026. And in the Holdings segment, we expect earnings to remain flat. So this gives us confidence to deliver the UEPS growth at the upper end of our 6% to 8% target range in 2026, while absorbing headwinds such as FX if FX rates remain where they are today. And with that, I hand over to Thomas for the conclusion.

Thank you very much, Alban. In conclusion, we have presented today record results at the top end of our target range, while at the same time, enhancing reserve prudence. You've seen that all businesses, geographies and lines of business are in excellent shape. They are delivering strong growth and profitability. And this is due to the fact that we have built a very diversified franchise that is well positioned now to capture the future growth opportunities. And we are certainly now laying the foundation for the next plan.

And as I said, we are confident in delivering a sustainable earnings growth. And for 2026, this will particularly mean that we can deliver underlying earnings per share at the top end of our range, and I'm very confident that we're getting there. Thank you very much for your attention, and we are now coming to your questions. It would be good if you ask a question, you say your name first and then your question. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from David Barma, Bank of America.

Firstly, on P&C Commercial Lines, please. Given the change in market conditions since the start of your plan, we could have expected you to reach your target with a bit more support from investment income than technical results. But what we're seeing today is very resilient margins across commercial lines, including XL. Alban, you just mentioned you expect stable margins in '26. Can you give us some context on the key measures you're taking across the commercial lines book to offset the headline pricing pressure we're seeing in both the U.S. and Europe? And then secondly, on the big solvency ratio benefits you expect from the review next year, where do you see the potential uses of this additional capital? I'm wondering to what extent this gives you more flexibility on to take underwriting or maybe market risk, change your debt structure, perhaps free up cash in some local units, et cetera? Any color there would be helpful. And then lastly, on Personal Lines, the underlying margin deteriorated in the second half of '25 and were flat compared to the same period in '24 despite pricing having been ahead of claims inflation throughout the year. So can you give us some color on that, please?

Thank you very much for your 3 questions. I would suggest the first question around Commercial Lines was around the outlook for Europe and the U.S. We start with Scott for '26, and then we go to Patrick Cohen for Europe. When it comes to the solvency benefits, Alban, if you could take that question, what are we doing when we are back at 232% solvency on the 1st of January 2027. And then Patrick, if you could talk about the question of the underlying margin in retail over the last quarter. So let's start with commercial and Scott.

Thank you, Thomas. Just a couple of comments from AXA XL standpoint. With respect to the portfolio, we have a very broad, diverse portfolio. To give perspective on the insurance side, we sell -- we have about 400 different products, and we sell a mix of those products across 26 different countries. So that gives us somewhat unique leverage and be able to figure out where the margins are and how we allocate resources and capital to execute on those margins. With respect to the United States, in particular, the property market, while seeing more price reductions in the fourth quarter than obviously in the earlier quarters, still remains an excellent business, and we continue to write that business and move forward on it. The D&O business, in particular, while has been in a soft market for the last few years, we actually saw prices starting to level out towards the end of the fourth quarter, and we remain sort of optimistic going into '26 that we're coming out of that softening marketplace and into a little bit more stable to slightly increasing pricing in that marketplace. Other tailwinds for us is obviously, we're a pretty large buyer of reinsurance and some of the pricing on the reinsurance for us on the insurance side is going to help us relative to margin as well as our expense initiatives and also investment income. So you pile everything together, we remain confident in our ability to maintain our ultimate combined ratios at a similar level that we're currently at. Patrick, on...

Thank you for the question. I would start by saying that we are super pleased to have record high profitability in Commercial line in 2025. This is the reflection of a disciplined growth with resilient pricing that is above loss trend in '25 and we expect it to be in '26. So really an outstanding profitability. We have an all year below 90% combined ratio and importantly, high retention rate. When we look at our markets, the U.K. market has been a little bit more challenging with declining prices in some line of business, but we remain pretty much very much, I would say, disciplined across the board. As I said, resilient pricing, above loss trend in all countries and discipline in our portfolio management with some actions we've been taking. So going forward, -- we will continue with the same spirit to maintain those margin. We believe this is feasible. We have strong initiatives to further increase our technical excellence and win the preference of our customers. We're focusing on high growth profitable specialties that could be renewables in Germany or surety in Switzerland and other markets. We are making it even more easy to interact with us for our brokers with straight-through processing and underwriting platforms that -- in order to win their preference and the preference of our customers. And very importantly, we're ramping up AI capabilities Certainly, in underwriting, we're super pleased with some use cases we're having, for instance, in the U.K. that helps our underwriters speeding up data ingestion, triage and give them knowledge assistance in underwriting. So all of this makes us very confident to keep with the same trajectory of disciplined growth.

Thank you, Patrick. Alban, on the Solvency, knowing that solvency is very much also driven by future profit, which is not cash, but you will give some light into that.

Absolutely. David. So the first thing to say is that it is obviously a Solvency II revision. So given that at group level, we are regulated with this norm, it impacts our solvency. But a significant number of our subsidiaries have local regulations that are different. thinking about XL, thinking about the U.K., Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan. So locally, you won't see a change in the solvency ratio. And therefore, that will not create for those entities additional solvency and therefore, additional ability to upstream cash. And in the European entities, Solvency is not always the constraining factor when it comes to paying additional dividend. So what will we use this solvency for? You mentioned 2 things. One is additional underwriting risks. At this stage, as you know, and you saw that in our Solvency II roll forward, we generate 28 points of capital every year before dividend and buyback. And so -- and 4 after paying dividend and buyback and having our organic growth. So today, capital is not a constraining factor for our growth. And so we are growing on lines of business that we like, where we have the proper profitability, as Scott explained. So we want to grow more, but having more solvency is not a factor in this equation. And it's quite similar on the asset side. Theoretically, you're right, we could take more asset risk, but that's not something that we want. The risk that we take on in our assets are not driven by solvency. They are driven by our ALM, our strategic asset allocations and a review of market opportunities. So fundamentally, what does that additional solvency give us? More capital flexibility and ability to deleverage if we want to.

Thank you, Alban. Patrick, on the question of retail and underlying margin deterioration?

Yes. So I would first restate what was said in the presentation in the introduction that this is an excellent year for retail in Europe, excellent performance, both on the top line, on the fact that we are gaining net new contracts everywhere and very significantly across Europe. And when it comes to the margins, I would stress the fact that our loss ratio is actually down over 2 points, and that's 1 point when you exclude cat. So that's a very, very strong performance. And again, this trend is reflected in all of our entities, which is something quite quite positive. Obviously, there's always a bit of variability from one half of the year to the other, depending mostly on weather condition and large losses. I think this is what explains the slight differentiation between half 1 and half 2. But overall, it's a very, very strong improvement we had in our loss ratio in retail.

I mean the net new contracts were like EUR 1.7 million, which is not nothing, so very good. We go to the next question.

Next question is from Thomas Bateman, Mediobanca.

I just wanted to come back to your positive comments on the full reports out. I remember looking previously and you haven't really Sorry, we have trouble reserves at all.

Thomas, sorry, we have trouble understanding you. I don't know if you are using your headset, but if you could maybe try again. We couldn't understand what you said.

Apologies. I just wanted to go back to the reserving and your positive comments on reserving. Can you give us a little bit more color there about what you've done? And in particular, if we were when the reports released the full report, what we see in terms of the most recent. And the second question is just on the distribution footprint you talked about in retail and SME. Can you maybe just give us a little bit of color on the...

Yes. Thomas, it was again, difficult to understand your questions. Let me try and see if we did understand the right thing based on the fragments we heard. So your first question, I guess, was around the reserve prudency that we mentioned. What have we done exactly? And the second one was about distribution footprint in retail and SME. Were those your 2 questions?

Yes, exactly.

Very good. So I think on the first question, Alban, if you could talk a little bit. I mean, it's relatively simple. If you look at the last year and the nat cat experience that we have had, we could have easier shown better results. We decided not to and instead increase our reserve prudence, but Alban will go into more detail. And then on the distribution footprint, retail and SE SME, we have the pleasure also to be joined by [indiscernible] who has recently taken over AXA France, where we have a very strong distribution footprint and where we're also strong in the development of our footprint. And maybe he can shed some light on where we are and how he's going to continue to do it, knowing that in France, wherever you are in France, you're never further than 4 kilometers away from an agency of AXA. Alban, on the reserving.

Thank you, Thomas. So on reserving, consistent approach over time has always been to have a prudent approach in all our lines of business, in all our countries. And you see that through the recurring level of PYDs that we have. We also said that we would manage together natural catastrophes, discount benefit and PYDs. And that's why this year, given the low level of nat cat compared to our annual budget, we could further enhance that prudence. I think in your question, if we understood correctly, there was also a question of geographic footprint of the ability to release PYD. And that gives me the opportunity to mention that, obviously, in France and in Europe, we have that, but also at XL, we've had a prudent approach at both XL Insurance and XL Reinsurance. You saw that we didn't release any PYDs in 2025 in those 2 entities, but we took the opportunity of that good year to further increase the prudence. And the -- and we are now on all our lines of business and in particular, in the long-tail lines of XL at a significantly better level of prudence than 4, 5 years ago, for instance.

Thank you, Alban. [indiscernible] And then I will suggest afterwards, because we talk about agent in France, Patrick can maybe add something around other distribution networks that we have activated like Couriers and Lloyds. Matthieu?

Right. Thank you very much for the question. So yes, we do have in France a very distinctive exclusive distribution force that encompasses almost 15,000 people on the ground, should it be tied agents or salaried commercial salespeople. And we have continuously invested in this workforce to illustrate, last year, it was more than 400 new distributors that joined this force on the ground to better serve our customers. So first, we grow numbers on the ground. Then on top of this, we keep investing in developing their expertise to better advise our customers, should it be on P&C, life and health but also on very important topics such as preventions, which is critical for the future and the topic of insurability. So numbers, expertise, but also we do invest in their tools that we put in their hands. And then I would also like to shed the light on what we do with AI. We are currently -- we have introduced to improve their productivity, a new tool that is based on AI to better interact when it comes to defining the underwriting or answering, sorry, the underwriting questions that they might have. We introduced an AI tool that was deployed very rapidly, probably in a speed that was unseen before. And we have, on a daily basis, more than 2,000 requests that are automatically answered. So better for their productivity. So we grow them in number. We grow -- we keep developing our expertise, and we keep equipping them with modern tools.

I would add to this that we have made a number of very significant deal in Europe on alternative distribution from our tied agents that are going to help decisively and are already helping to drive the growth. So to mention a few, the Lloyds banking agreement in the U.K. we're talking about a leading banking network serving 28 million customers. The partnership with [indiscernible] in Spain, which is the National Post that has over 24,000 -- 2,400, sorry, post offices. Social secretaries in Belgium, all those deals are going to fuel growth. I would add also the social Secretary deal in Belgium for serving micro entrepreneurs. And last but not least, obviously, direct. Direct is 18% of the retail business in Europe. With the acquisition of Prima, we're positioned Italy, but all of our direct platforms that are strong in Ireland, in Belgium, in France, in a strong position to leverage that expertise and the disruption they've been able to create in Italy.

Next question is from Farooq Hanif, JPMorgan.

I hope you can hear me. I just want to go to Alban to understand the investment margin. So when I look at Slide 41, I can see there's still a large gap between your reinvestment yield and asset book yield in P&C. And obviously, your insurance finance expenses, you're predicting to be a similar level to 2025. Can you talk about that dynamic going forward? So can we take the gap between asset book yield and reinvestment yield and assume that it, for example, closes over a number of years? And what is the kind of outlook for insurance finance expenses? And then allied to that, how come we've not seen the same dynamics in Life? And what do you expect for Life investment margin? And I just have one more question, which is, can you -- a question for Thomas. Could you please explain what you mean by enhanced capital allocation? Because it's a very nebulous term. It could mean a lot of different things, but what is that you were trying to say with enhanced capital allocation in the next plan?

Thank you, Farooq, for your 2 questions. And we will start with Alban on the Life and P&C investment margin. I think you have clearly spotted a future potential when you think about 2026 and the next plan, but Alban will explain the detail.

So thank you for your question. You're absolutely right. We see that as a strong opportunity for the coming years, and we do plan to close that gap between the asset book yield and the reinvestment yield. Bear in mind that we have a 5-year duration on our P&C business. So that's probably the pace at which we are renewing our bond portfolio. And we -- and the amount that we invest is very much in line with -- we invest every year is very much in line with that. And we don't want to change significantly our asset allocation. And so this is -- this target is reliable, I would say. And why don't we see the same on the Life side? Simply because as a matter of principle, you will see the same because we have a difference, which is even larger between the book yield and the asset yield on the Life side, as you see on Page 48. But as we said during the comments on the slides, Overall, Life & Health earnings grew at 7%. On Life only, we had a significant increase in CSM release by 8%. And so we thought that it was not necessary to have our funds distribute as much as last year. So last year being 24%. So that's why you see some flattish numbers on investment income in Life, but that's due more to setting money aside rather than not having better yield on our assets.

So Farooq, on the nebulous term around enhanced capital allocation to explain it in a simple way. We obviously have plenty of growth opportunities with the exposure that we have now in commercial line in health and retirement. And so the question is, for us, how do you -- how are we disciplined enough on these growth opportunities to make sure that we grow at attractive returns. And we have put up and enhanced the internal framework around how to understand these opportunities, how to understand their profitability and how to make sure that we are allocating capital even more there where the growth opportunities are, but where we can also grow at attractive returns. I hope that makes it clearer.

And Farooq, I realize I haven't answered your full question. I haven't answered on the the financial expenses, and they are expected to remain stable in '26 compared to '25.

Is the gap going to widen -- really sorry to interrupt. Is the gap going to widen is growing at a lower rate?

Should be stable, so not growing. And investment income in P&C should grow given the fact that we'll have a better book yield.

As I said to you earlier, Farooq, I think there is a potential for doing better, and you spotted it.

Next question is from Andrew Crean, Autonomous Research.

Three questions. One follow-up from Farooq. That capital allocation discipline comment, was there any part of your business where you're thinking that potentially the returns are not high enough and that disposals would be the route forward? Secondly, could you tell us what the Solvency II ratio would be in a crisis or GFC burn down coverage ratio? And then could you thirdly -- and you've talked a lot about it, but about more conservative reserving. Could you actually enumerate in terms of what the impact was on '25 from the additional buffers you built into both P&C and Life?

Thank you, Andrew. I suggest that I'll take the first question. And Alban, if you could take the second one around the Solvency II ratio in a GFC crisis, what's the coverage ratio? And then also the question around what do the numbers of this conservative reserving mean for 2025. So on the capital allocation discipline, Andrew, this topic is always an ongoing topic. So when we look at the question of disposal, we have disposed quite a lot to get our business model to a pure insurance player, but also to dispose of all the entities that we have had that were subcritical for us. This is a continuous evaluation. And so if we, going forward, see businesses where the capital allocation is not the way we want, we do not shy away from disposing it. But at the moment, we feel we are at a level where the majority of our business and the large majority of our business is in the right spot. But again, because markets are changing, geopolitics are changing and so on, this is an ongoing evaluation. Alban, on the question 2 and 3.

So on our Solvency II ratio after crisis, to be completely honest, we have not done the calculation in a post Solvency II revision world. But you will remember that what we've been saying over the last years is that a GFC-like crisis would cost us 30 to 35 points. So there's no reason to believe that, that amount, that number would change significantly after the revision. On the prudence that we have in our balance sheet, I mean, we obviously don't disclose any amount. And I think the calculation is quite simple to do when you look at our nat cat and our PYDs on the additional amount of prudence that we could do this year compared to usual.

And not forgetting, Andrew, that certainly at XL, we have been doing this for quite some years because at XL, we always had a very clear profit target and everything that Scott and his team generated beyond went into further reserve strengthening.

Next question is from William Hawkins, KBW.

First of all, are you thinking that your tech investment spend is currently a tailwind or a headwind to the 6% to 8% EPS growth that you're delivering? I'm just trying to get clear, do you think that you're sacrificing near-term earnings growth so you can have a better long-term earnings growth? Or are you already taking the net benefit of cost savings from your Big IT budget? Secondly, please, the 17 points increase from the review in the solvency, how much of that is coming from own funds and how much of that is coming from required capital? And then thirdly, in this presentation, you've dropped any reference to book value growth. I know why, but that featured quite highly in your 2024 presentation as part of the compounding value narrative. So I wonder if you could just talk a bit about how you're thinking about that metric has evolved and how you're thinking about performance management relative to that metric, please?

Thank you, William, for your 3 questions. I suggest that on the first one, we let Guillaume Boy talk about it. And as you have heard already in the areas that Guillaume was mentioning about concrete cases, we are working very much on cases that have a short-term payback. When we talk about the second question, Alban, around 17%, what is the split? And then on the third one around the compounding of the book value, you will also get to it. Obviously, this was affected by foreign exchange, but you can give the detail.

So on technology investment spend. So first, technology investment spend is likely to increase in the coming years, and we are determined to do that because we are convinced indeed that we can extract gains and future earnings from an accelerated investment in AI. We have started already doing that in this plan. And as I mentioned earlier, you do see tangible effects. So it is indeed a tailwind to that extent. We gave you the tangible effect on the loss ratio in P&C, where our accelerated investment in AI has helped us improve the loss ratio by 1 point. On the other hand, we do acknowledge the fact that on several of those cases, profit emergence will take time. And therefore, we are extremely committed to our target. And we know that we have other levers to improve expense ratio in order to more than offset the impact of the additional technology spend. So those other levers, what are the stronger efforts on procurement discipline across the board and accelerated efforts in shoring in all of our countries. Those elements are key element of our efficiency plan. And again, all in all, they will help us to more than offset the additional technology spend we need to do in order to prepare for the future and extract further earnings generation power in particular for the next plan.

Will, on the Solvency II review, it obviously depends a bit on the market conditions, but it's 90% to 100% EF and almost nothing in required capital. And on your last question on book value growth, book value growth does matter to us and very much in line with what we said, as you pointed out, 2 years ago. So the book value growth is 1.5% for the whole year. But as Thomas mentioned, it's impacted by FX and notably by the U.S. dollar. Excluding that impact, it would have been plus 9% and therefore, very much in line with what we want to do because we want to grow that book value number.

Next question is from Andrew Baker, Goldman Sachs.

First one, just on the P&C top line, growth was 5% in 2025. Obviously, we've still got some FX pricing volume trends. How are you assuming this develops in '26? And then secondly, are you able just to provide an overview of the changes you made to your reinsurance program in '26? And any comments you're able to make on pricing and combined ratio impact would be really helpful.

Thank you, Andrew. On the reinsurance program, we let Alban outline these changes. And by the way, to go back to Farooq's question around constant improvement on capital allocation, this is also part of it. And then on the top line, I would suggest that, look, let's have the 3 market heads, Scott, Patrick and Mathieu to give a quick view on what you think 2026 will be. So let's start with the second question, Alban, and then we go to Scott, Patrick and Mathieu.

So thank you, Andrew, for your question. Fundamentally, we have not changed significantly our reinsurance program for '26 compared to '25 in the arbitrage between lowering retention or attachment points and enjoying better prices, we decided to enjoy better prices. And we could see, for instance, that in property and property cat prices for reinsurance for our own program were down more than 20%. So that will obviously support our earnings in '26.

Scott, Patrick and then Mathieu on what do you think about the P&C top line in 2026?

Yes. I think for insurance for AXA XL, I think we're thinking 2026 is going to be in line with sort of 2025. And the reason we think that is a couple of things. One, the topic of conversation has been around these data centers, and we're very excited about the opportunities facing us in the data centers. We're one of the few markets that can bring not only the construction capability, ensuring the construction side, but also the operating side to it across not just property, but all the lines of business, casualty, environmental, professional lines that obviously these data centers need globally, and we can deliver that across the whole board. Obviously, we're very carefully managing our aggregations on that. but we also know that we need to be able to deliver in the local marketplace. The interesting thing for us also on those is we've invested quite a bit into our alternative energy business over the last couple of years, and that's going to become an ongoing discussion for the data centers, and we're somewhat uniquely positioned to deliver on that capability that these clients are looking for, both engineering, claims as well as underwriting. The last thing I'll say is there's also the sovereignty boost you see in Europe with respect to the infrastructure bill, defense build, et cetera. Those are our clients who will be working on that over the next few years, and we actually consider that a little bit in '26, but we'll see more of that in the future as an opportunity to assist our clients as they continue to grow and build their businesses, that's actually good for us as we are an important partner to them. So we remain very optimistic about the opportunities facing us in 2026.

When it comes to Europe, we are also confident in keeping the momentum. We see this in the beginning of the year. If I take the example of retail, we're having 200,000 net new customers. So the momentum keeps going. As I said, the pricing environment remains conducive both in retail and in commercial. We have those new sizable distribution partnership that will mechanically improve the growth, again, Lloyd's, [indiscernible], Prima. And we are working actually a lot leveraging AI to enhance cross-sell and retention in a very good quality portfolio, both in personal and commercial lines. So those are all the levers we're going to pull to keep that momentum.

And to conclude with France, so we have -- we see a very good momentum. If I start with retail, we had a historical year with more than 500,000 net new contracts in retail, not only with AXA France, but also with our direct business, direct Assurance, which is the clear leader in the digital space. And we do that similarly to what Patrick mentioned in Europe with a very good profitability, leveraging our power AI-powered pricing tool. So very good momentum and very good outlook on the retail side. And on the commercial side, the current renewal campaign doesn't show any softening on our side, which is a very good news. And as you know, we are very well balanced between tied agents and brokers. So yes, a very good outlook as well on the commercial line, where we will keep applying our traditional underwriting discipline at the same time.

Next question is from Will Hardcastle, UBS.

It's Will Hardcastle, UBS. We saw some headlines a couple of weeks ago on the potential LLM distribution risk. I guess, how are you thinking about this risk on the retail and perhaps SME business? And where would you see the greatest risk and opportunity from a geography or line of business? Interested in your thoughts whether you even view this as a credible risk across Europe or not? Secondly, I recognize you're hinting and you're suggesting that you've looked at the gap between nat cat discounting and PYD, et cetera, to work out that resilience build. But can you try and help us to understand how we can look to add confidence to those words, whether that's resiliency build and confidence levels or a ratio you can point to?

Thank you, Will. I suggest that Guillaume Borie is taking the first question around the LLM distribution risk. And I think what's important to see that every technological revolution will potentially bring forward new competitors. But when you look at the last digital revolution in insurance, it has more ended up in a way that these new competitors have collaborated and partnered with the existing players. And I think that's probably what might happen here as well, but Guillaume might have even more insight. And on the second one, Alban, we need to get a bit sharper because obviously, that question is coming back on the question of nat cat and PYD. Guillaume?

Thank you very much. So when we look at LLM distribution, we very much see that as an opportunity. For us, it's another distribution channel that is opening up. And we have had a long experience of strengthening our distribution footprint by entering those new opportunities as quickly as possible. This is what we have done consistently over the past 20 years with direct distribution, turning us into a leading direct player. And every time, we see that as another opportunity of enlarging and expanding our reach to customers. So yes, it will transform long term probably the way we distribute. But we believe that for us, it's a way, again, to gain a new channel. How do we make that happen? We have already started working on it. We are currently rolling out across all our retail operations, what we call a brand tracker. It's a tool that our teams are using locally in order to identify how we are ranked in those LLMs and what we need to do in order to optimize the way we are presented in those LLMs and in the results that our customers are seeing so that more and more, we are on the first rank. That's what we have done in the past with more traditional search engine optimization techniques. That's what we will do now with LLMs.

I will answer in the following way. We designed our risk adjustment so that in total, between the best estimate reserves and the risk adjustment, our confidence interval is 65%. And what we will add to that is that we have a prudent best estimate, obviously, within the rules of IFRS 17, but a prudent best estimate. So in total, we are above 65% confidence internal.

Good. Thank you, Alban. We have 8 minutes left and 4 questions. So I would suggest we try and cover them all. And I ask the AXA team, including myself, to give short answers. So next question.

Next question is from Michael Huttner, Berenberg.

Really quick, how much capital are you allocating to your Life growth? Because I've not -- I haven't looked in detail on the slides, but apologies. But it's more now the broader topic of pensions rather than protection and unit-linked by product. And then the second question on Prima. Now you own it and you've had a decent look, how much extra capacity in terms of profit or growth have you got or how much more confidence than before?

Thank you, Michael. So we start with Prima. Patrick is going to answer the question because he's the business owner of Prima now. And then while Alban is looking for the capital allocation to the Life growth, we'll get that afterwards. Patrick?

Yes. To be very specific, thanks for the question. First off, the performance in '25 exceeds our expectation. GWP is up 39% to EUR 1.8 billion. Prima has captured 40% market share. It's of the direct space and it's 12% market share of the Motor business in Italy. Combined ratio is very solid at 85%. So at this stage, the profit at the MGA level last year was EUR 97 million on a 100% basis. And we estimate the third-party carriers profit addition being EUR 60 million to EUR 70 million. So we intend to recapture this profit over time. So you can consider that it's already EUR 110 million to EUR 120 million earnings from Prima with a 51% stake.

Thank you, Patrick. Alban?

So Michael, on the allocation to Life, first, one thing to remember is that when we say that we generate 28 points of solvency capital, that's after having funded the capital requirements for our developments, including in Life. But then if we look at the breakdown of our capital by business line, Life & Savings is around 41%, and that's the same number as in '24.

Next question is from Dominic O'Mahony, BNP Paribas Exane.

It's Dom O'Mahony from BNP Paribas. I'll just keep myself for 2, if that's okay. One is, I'm really surprised by the guidance on the insurance finance expense. I don't really understand why it's not growing more. Could you just run through why it isn't growing more, Alvin? I would have expected over time at least, the book yield would trend maybe up to the high 2s or something of that level given your business mix. So anything you could say about why it's not growing more in '26 and what the sort of the end state would be once you've sort of washed through the whole book, that would be great. And then just on cash and debt, Alvin, I think you sort of gently hinted that you might consider using your cash position to delever. There's not much debt left coming to maturity or call in '26. Would you rule out liability management exercises? Are you more focused on deleveraging organically and/or through maturities or calls? Any color on that would be helpful.

First question for you, Alban.

Dom on the EA, I think it's very much in line with our plan. If I remember correctly, we said EA will grow by EUR 800 million, and that was EUR 600 million in the first year of the plan, then EUR 100 million, EUR 100 million. So between 0 and EUR 100 million for EA next year is really what you should have in mind. And then on the cash and the deleveraging, I mean, the obvious thing to say is that, as you saw, we have some debt, which has lost the benefit of grandfathering and -- but we still pay a subordinated debt coupon on it. So -- and we have EUR 2.4 billion of debt in that category. So it doesn't make sense to keep them forever, I would put it that way.

Next question is from James Shuck, Citi.

Okay. Then we move to the next question and last question.

Next question is from Kailesh Mistry, Deutsche Bank.

So the first one is on Solvency II. Obviously, we've gone through -- we've got through the grandfathering. We've had the review out of the way. The business has reduced its risk profile and appears to be improving its prudence. So when we move into the next plan, should we expect you to sort of lower that target range again? Or would you stay around what you effectively guided towards for this plan? The second question is on AI and technology. I think Thomas spoke very eloquently about what you've done in that space. Just to sort of nail it down, which of the applications do you expect ultimately to be competed away? And in which areas do you think you can hold on to the advantages?

Thank you very much. So let me ask both questions. I mean, I answer both questions. So on Solvency II, I mean, we don't have a target range anymore. So we have a simple rule internally. Everything that is above 200% is good. And whether it's 215, 230 doesn't really matter to us. It's just important that it's above 200%. And as Alban explained beforehand, our ability with a higher solvency ratio of extracting more cash is relatively limited because that's not the driving factor nor is the question around solvency being driven by quite a lot of future profits. So we are -- we want to have a high solvency ratio, and it's important that it's above 20%. Then on the AI and technology, I would say you have 2 areas. One is the areas around efficiency where you mainly draw on market-based applications, if you think about call center optimization and so on. So in this area, I would say you probably will have difficulties to keep the additional margin for a long time. And then you've got the other areas, which is very much in the pricing prevention space, where I believe that it's very much linked to your own data, your own data quality. which is obviously not a market-driven solution. And in these areas, you will have a lot of the margin that will not be competed away. And obviously, our aim is to spend most of our energy in the second part. Obviously, we have to do the hygiene piece when it comes to copilot and application development when it comes to deploying market-based software and call centers and so on. But when it comes to the question about leveraging data, that's where we spend most of our time and most of our money. Very last question because it is now 30, but I heard that James is back in line. So James.

I'll keep myself to one question. And really, I just wanted to ask you about the journey around hyperpersonalization, particularly in retail P&C. I'm keen just to understand where you are in that personalization journey at this point? And what are the things that you see on the horizon that you're moving towards? And then if we take a more medium-term view, how will that hyperpersonalization ultimately evolve?

Thanks, James. That's a very good question. I mean, when you look today, probably the most advanced business we have within AXA on hyperpersonalization is Prima because they are the ones who have shown us away, and they will also be the example that exists within AXA for the rest of the AXA Group. And maybe, Patrick, if you wouldn't mind to talk a little bit about what Prima has done, so it becomes a bit more operational and clear for James.

Yes, certainly. So hyperpersonalization for us is one of the levers we have been using to grow and grow profitably, and Prima exemplified this through pricing sophistication, through the ability to put all this sophistication in their rating engines, they provide today a pricing that is very well adapted and very competitive to select the best risk. And they do this with models that enable to have dynamic pricing. So models that are continuously updated. That's on the pricing and growth side. On hyperpersonalization, I take your question as well to comment on another areas where we are at this stage, experimenting with very promising implementation, which is the one around how do you cross-sell more, how do you retain more customers, i.e., the right offer at the right time to the right customers. We're developing aggentic CRM solutions, whereby the system collects all the info, all the situation of the customers, adapt and analyze that, predicts the needs of the customer and in an automated way, develop hyper-personalized e-mails, hyper-personalized communication. When we implement this in those markets, we're seeing uplift that are quite remarkable, and we're going to scale that.

Thank you, Patrick. So we have to unfortunately come to the end of this very interesting exchange because, obviously, today, other competitors of ours are also releasing, and we also want to respect their timing. Thank you very much for participating and for asking your questions. We look forward to seeing you soon again and hopefully, latest at the -- on the 21st of September this year when we are hosting our Investor Day in London to reveal the next 3-year plan 2027 to 2029. Thank you, and have a great day.