Main Determinants of Profit Sharing Policy in the French Life Insurance Industry

Pre-print, Working paper: We use a brand new data-set built from French supervisory reports to investigate the drivers of the participation rates served on euro-denominated life-insurance contracts over the period 1999-2013. Our analysis confirms practitioners’ insight on the alignment with the 10-years French government bond, yet we show that on aggregate, insurers serve less than this target. Our data indicate that financial margins are more strictly targeted than participation. We find evidence that lapses are fairly uncorrelated with participation, suggesting other levers to pilot surrenders. If higher asset returns can imply better yield for policyholders, riskier portfolios do not translate into better participation

Author(s)

Fabrice Borel-Mathurin, Pierre-Emmanuel Darpeix, Quentin Guibert, Stéphane Loisel

Date of publication
  • 2015
Keywords JEL
E21 E49 G11 G22
Keywords
  • Participation rate
  • Taux de revalorisation
  • Profit sharing policy
  • Life insurance
  • Panel data
  • Regulatory database
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2015-16
Version
  • 1