PARIS (Bloomberg) — Axa SA, Europe’s second-biggest insurer, had an eight percent increase in third-quarter revenue as it sold more life and savings products in France and the UK and boosted assets under management.Revenue rose to 17.9 billion euros ($22.9 billion) from 16.6 billion euros a year earlier, based on figures from company reports.

Sales missed the 18.3 billion-euro median estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The value of Axa’s new life and savings business, a gauge of the present value of future profits expected from long-term life and pension policies, advanced 40 percent, also short of estimates.

“It was another solid quarter for Axa, but these numbers aren’t exceptional,” said Jerome Forneris, who helps manage $7.7 billion, including Axa stock, at Banque Martin Maurel in Marseilles, France. “The life and savings figures are a bit of a disappointment.”

Chief executive officer Henri de Castries aims to more than double sales of life and savings products in France through 2012. To expand abroad, he announced in June the 7.9 billion-euro purchase of Credit Suisse’s Winterthur unit, which will give Axa 100 billion euros of assets under management and a leading position in the Swiss insurance market.

The shares slipped 27 cents, or 0.9 percent, to 30.48 euros as of 4.34 p.m. in Paris, valuing the insurer at 63.6 billion euros.

In the third quarter, the value of Axa’s new life and savings business reached 293 million euros, compared with analysts’ 310 million-euro median estimate.

“The miss was entirely attributable to the US business,” Blair Stewart, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Edinburgh, wrote in a note to clients yesterday.