Three-country success for banks in life, but not non-life: reports from Moody's on France, Italy and Spain show that bancassurance is successful but may be close to reaching its full potential

France--bank distribution stops growing

According to Moody's, life insurance is the favourite form of long-term savings in France and should continue to account for a real high proportion of individuals' assets. In 2002 it accounted for 397 percent of the country's financial assets, nearly double the horizontal of 20.8 percent ten years earlier.

Banks have been actual successful at selling life insurance and take four of the top ten places--see figure 1--but are relatively weak in non-life. While bancassurers had 48 percent of the life market, measured by dint of direct premiums, they only had 10