Individual life insurance contracts are for the most part savings products. The mathematical provisions of euro-denominated products under these contracts amounted to € 1,148 billion at 2023 year-end, compared with € 1,165 billion at 2022 year-end. Among these contracts, the largest category was “single premium life insurance contracts or unpaid payments (including open groups)”, representing more than 91% of individual life insurance contracts in terms of mathematical provisions.

Group life insurance contracts are pension products that provide beneficiaries with additional income upon their payment. The market includes several categories of contracts, whose mathematical provisions corresponding to euro-denominated products amounted to € 144 billion at 2023 year-end, compared with € 136 billion in 2022. The category “group life insurance policies”, which accounted for 64% of outstanding life insurance policies with a dominant pension component, was the largest.

The average rate of revaluation of euro funds on individual contracts (including open groups) and on group contracts with a predominance of retirement contracts increased significantly in 2023: by 69 basis points to reach 2.60% in 2023 net of levies on amounts and before social security contributions for individual contracts and by 38 points, reaching 2.59%, for group contracts. These increases are in line with the one observed in 2022 (at +63 and +45 points respectively) and are linked to the higher bond rate environment.

These increases were made possible by the partial reversal in 2023 of the provision for profit sharing. Indeed, insurers allocated amounted to this provision during the low interest rate period until 2021 to cope with a potential rate hike, which occurred in 2022-23. The provisions for profit sharing, expressed as a percentage of life insurance provisions, thus reached 4.9% for individual contracts and 2.0% for group contracts at the end of 2023, compared with 5.4% and 2.6% respectively at the end of 2022.

The average technical rate is stable at 0.37% in 2023 compared with 0.36% in 2022 for individual contracts and 1.04% in 2023 compared with 1.12% in 2022 for collective contracts. However, the situation varies from one organization to another, and some institutions hold in their portfolios a stock of old contracts providing high technical interest rates.

Finally, the average management charging rate paid by policyholders was 0.59% in 2023 for individual contracts and 0.40% in 2023 for group contracts, compared with 0.62% and 0.39% respectively in 2022.