Due to the sharp fall in interest rates, the existence of the preferred placement of the French is threatened, at least in its current form. Professionals in the sector, in great difficulty, are thinking of introducing a share of risk in contracts.

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Falling interest rates are good news for individuals wanting to buy property. This is less good news for life insurance, the preferred investment of the French, whose very existence is threatened. What is frankly worrying is that the life insurers who market these contracts are caught in the throat: the money entrusted to them by savers is largely invested in government bonds, which today do not earn anything .

However, if millions of individuals buy life insurance, it is for their savings to earn them. Hence the growing difficulties of life insurers whose financial mattress is shrinking. The agency Moody's, whose job is to measure the financial strength of companies, sounds the alarm: the entire life insurance sector in Europe is now weakened.

Savers will have to get used to taking out some more risky contracts

The concern could even win savers. Those who play scare remind us that in the 1990s in Japan, the first country to have experienced interest rates at zero and the inconveniences that go with it, many life insurance companies went bankrupt, precisely. We still remain very far in Europe.

What will happen is that savers will have to become accustomed to taking on slightly riskier contracts, where some of the savings are invested in equities - it pays more when things are good - rather than bonds whose interest rates are at zero. Because the days when life insurance offered high returns and 100% guaranteed will soon belong to the past.