AXA is one of the largest insurance groups in the world, and its origins are small. The company began in 1817 in Normandy as the Compagnie d'Assurances Mutuelles contre l'Incendie, a mutual fire insurer set up in Rouen by Jacques-Théodore le Carpentier and 17 other property owners. It stayed a provincial mutual, known for most of that time as Ancienne Mutuelle, into the 1970s. The group that exists today was built by Claude Bébéar, who was recruited in 1958, became chief executive in 1975 and ran the company until 2000.
The Bébéar acquisition record
Bébéar bought companies that were often larger than his own. He took control of the Drouot Group in 1982, the leading private French insurance group at the time, bought Présence in 1986 and merged with Compagnie du Midi in 1988, which made AXA the second-largest French insurer and brought the United Kingdom life company Equity and Law. In 1985 the group adopted the name AXA, an invented word chosen because it is short and pronounceable in any language. In July 1991 AXA demutualised and took control of The Equitable, then the fifth-largest life insurer in the United States, after a failed attempt to buy Farmers. The 1996 purchase of UAP, a French insurer twice AXA's size, made it France's largest insurer. Bébéar handed over to Henri de Castries in May 2000, when AXA had 140,000 employees, 50 million customers and revenues of ~$90.4 billion (EUR 80 billion). He died in November 2025 at the age of 90.
The pivot to property and casualty
For decades AXA's earnings leaned on life insurance and savings contracts, which are sensitive to interest rates. After the 2008 financial crisis and years of near-zero rates, that exposure became expensive. In 2018, under Thomas Buberl, AXA paid $15.3 billion for XL Group, a Bermuda-based commercial property and casualty insurer and reinsurer, creating AXA XL. Property and casualty is now the largest business: gross written premiums and revenues of ~$65.5 billion (EUR 58 billion) in 2025, against ~$42.4 billion (EUR 37.5 billion) in life and ~$21.5 billion (EUR 19 billion) in health.
The United States exit
To help fund XL Group and cut exposure to capital-heavy annuities, AXA listed its United States life and retirement business, the former Equitable, and sold down its stake from 2018, leaving Equitable Holdings as a separate company. The trade was deliberate: AXA gave up a large savings and annuity book in exchange for commercial risk that it prices annually, including property, liability, cyber and catastrophe cover for large companies.
How the money works now
AXA earns premiums and then earns investment income on the reserves it holds until claims are paid. In 2025 gross written premiums and other revenues rose 6% to ~$131 billion (EUR 116 billion), underlying earnings rose 6% to ~$9.49 billion (EUR 8.4 billion), net income reached ~$11.1 billion (EUR 9.80 billion) and the property and casualty combined ratio improved to 90.6%, meaning underwriting was profitable before investment returns. The Solvency II ratio ended 2025 at 224%. The last piece of the simplification came on July 1, 2025, when AXA sold AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas Cardif for ~$5.76 billion (EUR 5.1 billion) in cash, out of a total transaction value of ~$6.1 billion (EUR 5.4 billion), and signed a long-term agreement for BNP Paribas to manage a large part of its insurance assets.
