France and Germany are drifting apart

There is no such thing as a typical European insurance portfolio.

Solvency II provides insurers across the European Economic Area with a common prudential framework. That makes their balance sheets unusually comparable. It does not make their investment behaviour uniform.

France and Germany illustrate the problem.

Their insurers operate under the same broad capital rules and face many of the same market conditions. Yet their liabilities, product structures and investment traditions differ. The legacy of guaranteed savings products is not identical. Neither is the role played by unit-linked business, affiliated asset managers or strategic equity holdings.

Those differences become more visible when portfolios are observed over several years rather than at a single date.

A movement that appears modest at European level can conceal reallocations in opposite directions across national markets. Growth in one country’s collective investment holdings may coincide with another’s preference for direct securities. The same applies to equities, real estate and private assets.

For asset managers, “European insurance” is a convenient market category. For understanding how the money is actually invested, it is increasingly an inadequate one.

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Dutch pension reform: three years on, what actually changed?

The numbers insurers publish — and the ones they don’t

Solvency II: Europe is rewriting the rules for long-term capital

What does it cost in 2026 to manage €100bn of insurance assets?