Bancassurance in Europe - benchmark study

While bancassurance is a booming business, proper supervision of the holding entity and its subsidiaries is required in order to be well managed. It is fundamental to grant effective disclosure of key information between the banking and insurance counterparties and to harness synergies between the two. Leveraging from our strong position and expertise in the European financial services advisory market, Mazars was able to survey the bancassurance industry.

Our study was performed by interviewing CROs and CFOs of leading European Bancassurance companies on the principal organisational drivers of the business in order to build up benchmarks and trends. The interviews were based on both quantitative and qualitative questions with a focus on approaches used by Bank Risk Management and Internal Control Systems in controlling insurance subsidiaries.

Our Sample

The companies included in the sample were some of the main players from the major European bancassurance markets: France, Spain and Italy.

All the considered groups have a bank as a holding company and control subsidiaries operating both in life and non-life businesses. Life business is typical of the bancassurance channel, even if nowadays many entities are developing important non-life business.