Financial investments by insurers fell 438 billion euros last year, the Banque de France said on Tuesday, mainly due to increases in key central bank rates.
At the end of December, the outstanding balance of financial investments by insurers stood at 2,369 million euros, “well below (…) compared to 2022,” the central bank underlines in a quarterly publication on the sector.
This reduction is of the order of 15%.
It is life insurance that concentrates most of the investments and the loss of value: -419,000 million euros last year for 2,108,000 million euros in assets at the end of December.
This is the fall in the prices of assets held by insurers, less attractive due to the rise in reference rates that began in the middle of last year and aimed above all at countering inflation.
critical moment
Like bankers and asset managers, insurers must now manage a critical time that allows them to invest in new, more profitable bonds, but reduces the market value of their older bonds, which have become difficult to resell. if required.
Like a slowly turning ocean liner, it takes several years to roll over stocks with newer, better-yielding bonds.
The maturity of the bonds held will allow them to achieve this objective, as will the new deposits in funds in euros. But the latter are currently not favored by savers.
The net flows of these supports have been negative since the beginning of the year, at more than 4,000 million euros, according to the latest data made available by the professional federation of French insurers.
Its profitability (2% on average for euro life insurance funds, according to calculations by the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority, without taxes) is far from competing with that of regulated savings, led by Livret A (3% net of taxes since February 1). ).
Source: BFM TV
