Life insurance remains the preferred investment of the French. According to France Assureurs, the total outstanding amount crossed the 2,000 billion euro mark for the first time in January 2025, at exactly 2,020 billion. Its strength is largely due to the beneficiary clause: a mechanism which allows you to freely designate the person(s) who will receive the capital upon the death of the subscriber, outside the traditional rules of inheritance and with reduced taxation (152,500 euros deduction per beneficiary for payments made before age 70).
Catherine Baudeneau, spokesperson for Altaprofits, a financial investment broker, believes today that “this choice is above all personal”. “A subscriber has no no obligation to inform its beneficiariesand beneficiaries do not need to be informed at the time of subscription, nor during the life of the contract. » Many subscribers never tell their loved ones that they appear on this clause. The reason may also come from a persistent fear, inherited from a time when warning the beneficiary could, in itself, freeze the contract.
What the 2007 law changed for subscribers
Before December 17, 2007, an informed beneficiary could, alone, accept the benefit of the contract life insurance by sending a simple letter to the insurer. And accepting this benefit is an official procedure. Taken unilaterally, it froze the contract: the subscriber could no longer modify the clausecarry out a redemption or obtain an advance without the agreement of the accepting beneficiary. Many policyholders preferred to remain silent, for fear of finding themselves trapped.
But today, this no longer exists: “As a reminder, since 2007, the acceptance of the benefit by the beneficiary before the death of the subscriber requires consent »specifies Catherine Baudeneau. Nothing can be done behind your back. We can therefore warn our loved ones without fear, and that can be a good thing. First of all, “avoid family conflicts”underlines the expert. Secondly, not talking about it can have consequences: upon death, relatives are not always aware of the existence of the contract, the capital can end up sleeping for years with the insurer.
Life insurance: why saying nothing can become a problem
If your beneficiaries are not aware of the existence of your life insurance, you are taking the risk that no one finds the contract at the time of death. Certainly, insurers have the obligation, since the Eckert law which came into force on January 1, 2016, to consult each year the National Identification Directory of natural persons to detect deaths and search for beneficiaries. But as our expert points out, “this may take time.” Between the date of death and the moment the insurer identifies and contacts the correct beneficiary, several months may pass.
And if the contract falls through the cracks, the capital is transferred to the Caisse des Dépôts after ten years of inactivity, where they remain claimable for twenty years.
Why prevention remains strongly recommended
The escheat of life insurance contracts is therefore a real problem. According to Caisse des Dépôts, more than 7 billion euros from inactive accounts and contracts (bank accounts, savings accounts, life insurance) were still unclaimed in August 2025. And each year, France Assureurs identifies tens of thousands of contracts whose beneficiaries are slow to come forward. In 2024, 1.18 billion euros of capital from dormant life insurance contracts was returned to their beneficiaries, according to France Assureurs. This is 93 million more than in 2023.
For Catherine Baudeneau, the best balance remains “keep control of the contract during his lifetime; while leaving enough information to facilitate succession when the time comes ».
