French insurance group AXA has reported an 18% rise in annual net profit to €5.1 billion, boosted by a strong performance from its life assurance activities.
AXA, which is a major competitor of BUPA in the UK market, had earlier this year made an approach to take over Bupa Ireland, which was rejected.
Underlying profit rose by 20% to €4 billion. Analysts had expected net profit of €4.75 billion and an underlying performance of €3.9 billion.
AXA said that all parts of its business had performed well and that the group had outstripped targets in its plan called Ambition 2012.
Under its Ambition 2012 plan unveiled in October 2005, Axa set itself the goal of increasing underlying earnings, which exclude capital gains, by 15% per year between 2004 and 2012.
The life, savings and pensions business had increased underlying profit by 22% to €2.32 billion in 2006, AXA said.
The company said that this business had grown by 10% or more in most of the countries where it was present and had been particularly strong in France, the US, Britain and Germany. It did not give separate figures for Ireland.
