It’s a (very!) well-kept secret by insurance companies and banks. Few French people know about it and take advantage of it.
When you take out a loan, you must also take out what is called borrower insurance. This is a guarantee, for you and the lending organization, which allows you to cover all or part of the credit repayment deadlines when you are not able to assume them (death, loss of autonomy, disability, inability to work, sometimes loss of job). This insurance has a cost which can be extremely high, particularly when it comes to a property loan where it can reach several hundred euros per month. But did you know that, in certain cases, you can actually request a reimbursement of borrower insurance contributions?
To understand, we have to go back to the 1990s. At the time, insurance companies decided, with the approval of the public authorities, to overestimate risks and therefore increase the amount of contracts. But, according to article L331-3 of the Insurance Code, insurance companies are obliged to return part of this additional premium to their customers. Margins on which insurers logically received interest through investments. There are also several billion euros that would not have been claimed. In 2007, UFC-Que Choisir initiated proceedings and the courts confirmed this obligation. In fact, very few organizations have played the game. While according to figures from the Action Civile organization, for a property loan of 200,000 euros over 20 years, the borrower can hope to recover up to 3,000 euros . But be careful, to claim this reimbursement, you must meet certain conditions.
The first condition concerns the date of contraction of the credit. To be able to hope to recover this margin, the credit must have been taken out between 1996 and 2005 for a real estate loan and between 1997 and 2007 for a consumer loan. Second condition, the request must absolutely be made within two years following the end of the credit. Afterwards, it’s too late. Finally, and this is undoubtedly the most important aspect, only policyholders who have not declared any claim can claim this reimbursement. Let’s imagine that you have been ill for several months, and unable to repay your monthly payments, it is then the insurance which has taken over. In this case, the legal obligation to reimburse no longer applies.
Do you think you meet all of these conditions? If you decide to take individual action, it is essential to use the services of a lawyer (and therefore to invest a certain amount of money, for an uncertain result). But you can also join a collective action that brings together several applicants, like the one initiated by Action Publique in 2016.
