Bancassurance in Europe - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Bancassurance in Europe - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Within the European financial sector, the removal of regulatory barriers, the integration and harmonization processes within the single market and the evolution of the securities' industry pushed market players to pay greater attention to their efficiency in allocating resources in a more competitive environment. At the same time, customer preferences demand more sophisticated financial solutions and contributed to the fast and heterogeneous expansion of distribution i.e, bancassurance.

Bancassurance – combined banks and insurance companies – is a business model for the distribution of a wide variety of insurance products predominantly existing in the European Market. The prominence of this model lies in the ease of doing the sales part as the bancassurers can provide a full range of financial products as a bundled offering – from traditional banking, through mutual funds to insurance products – in one-stop shopping model. A strong bancassurance strategy can generate significant incomes through management fees for the banks and reduce expenses in the form of lesser customer acquisition costs for the insurers. Most of the banks have actively engaged client -oriented strategies.

We see a preference for brokers and independent financial advisers in the Americas while Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) rely more on bancassurance. Bancassurance is the main channel of distribution in many countries, accounting for more than 50% of life insurance products (eg. France, Italy, Spain, Austria) and in Portugal even more than 80%.

In Italy, life insurance distribution is fueled largely by banks, although the bancassurance model has evolved in recent years, and some agreements have been renegotiated. From 2011 to 2015, the profitability of investment products was low while insurance products offered attractive returns at relatively low risk. This growth of the bancassurance channel in life insurance also partly reflects the rise of the life insurance industry in Italy.

Such a business model thrives in countries where consumers typically go to their banks for most of their financial needs, such as France, Belgium, etc, rather than searching online, and typically want a one-stop solution for all financial needs. For example, in France, tax saver insurance products are predominantly used as saving options and banks sell them alongside traditional banking products. Given such customer preferences and hopefully higher turnaround chances for life insurance rather than non-life insurance, when offered as a bundled product, and a hence higher share of life insurance in the total premiums written across the region. Infographic explaining the predominance of bancassurance and higher life insurance share in the region is presented below.

The report includes an overview of the largest insurance providers and a few financial conglomerates operating in the market studied. Currently, some of the major players dominating the market studied, in terms of market share.

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support