PARIS (Reuters) - AXA (>> AXA), Europe's No. 2 insurer, blamed a stronger euro and seasonal weakness in life insurance for a slowdown in revenue growth in the first nine months of the year.

AXA is currently focused on lifting profitability through price hikes, higher-margin products and a plan to cut 1.7 billion euros (1.45 billion pounds) in costs by 2015. It is also increasing its exposure to emerging markets via acquisitions.

Nine-month revenue rose 2 percent to 69.5 billion euros ($95.93 billion), slower than the 3.4 percent revenue growth seen in the first six months of the year, AXA said on Thursday.

It reaffirmed its 2015 targets without giving a progress update.

"There are several factors that we can see: The exchange-rate effect, the impact of asset outflows from our Asian customers and the slight slowdown in life insurance - though the third quarter is never a very strong one," Deputy Chief Executive Denis Duverne told journalists on a conference call.

The third-quarter outflows seen at AXA's asset-management brands including AllianceBernstein (>> AllianceBernstein Holding LP) were due to fears that the U.S. Federal Reserve might start to wind down its bond-buying programmes designed to spur confidence and growth, he said.

Rock-bottom interest rates in the U.S. and the euro zone have pushed insurers and asset managers to reduce exposure to sovereign debt and seek higher-yielding and potentially riskier assets. AXA and German rival Allianz (>> Allianz SE) are ramping up real-estate investment and lending.

"We believe that in terms of risk-reward, French debt is not the most attractive investment and we have not bought more French debt in the recent period," Duverne said.

AXA shares have gained around 43 percent year-to-date, better than a 23 percent gain for the STOXX Europe insurance index <.SXIP> in the same period.

(Reporting by Lionel Laurent; Editing by James Regan)

By Lionel Laurent and Matthieu Protard

Stocks treated in this article : AXA, Allianz SE, AllianceBernstein Holding LP