Savings: Do the French bet their money on good investments?

In 2024, the French massively oriented their savings to life insurance, abandoning regulated booklets and bank deposits. But is it a profitable choice for their woolen stockings?

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Is the savings of the French well assigned? Does it go to the most remunerative investments? This is the question to answer the data from France Insurers and the Banque de France, presented during a press conference on Wednesday, March 26. Looking at the net savings flow of households -that is to say the payments less withdrawals -we can indeed see what placements attracted the most capital last year.

In 2024, life insurance broke down, with the most massive net collection: 29.4 billion euros. Then come the term accounts, with a net collection of 25.5 billion euros, then the booklets A and sustainable and solidarity development booklets (LDDS), which have raised 22 billion euros. As the France insurers note, life insurance notably benefited “Net collections divided by two in one year for regulated booklets”the harvest of booklets A and LDDS being indeed 48.4 billion euros in 2023. Worse, the net collection of the popular savings book (LEP) was divided by three: 20.6 billion euros in 2023, against 6.9 billion in 2024.

Savings flows have redirectly redirected to life insurance

But is betting on life insurance a wise choice from the point of view of return? At first glance no, because on the secure part of life insurance – the funds in euros, on which your capital is guaranteed, as on your booklet A -, the average performance was 2.1% in 2024 (after social security contributions), still according to France Insurers. Is much less than the A and LDDS booklets, the net rate of which was frozen to 3% throughout last year. And the gap is even more blatant with the LEP, whose yield was 4.7% on average the same year.

However, it is not the guaranteed capital supports that life insurance owes its abundant collection of 2024. In detail, the Euros funds are indeed a net mallect of 5 billion euros, which means that the services (voluntary withdrawals or following the death of the subscriber) exceeded the payments of 5 billion euros. Conversely, these deposits were 34.4 billion euros higher than services on account units (UC), the supports on which savers take the risk of losing all or part of their capital. However, on UCs, the average yield was 3.4% net of social security contributions in 2024, according to France Insureurs, better than booklets A and LDDS.

A sign of the sagacity of savers, three other poorly remunerative investments were also deserted in 2024: deposits (-14.8 billion net collection), that is to say the bank accounts on which capital is not remunerated; Banking booklets (-17.1 billion euros), such as super booklets, which paid, gross taxation, less than the booklet last year, and finally housing savings plans (PEL) and housing savings accounts (CEL) which only offered 1.6% and 1.4% net respectively to new subscribers in 2024.

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