Insurance: how to reduce the bill

In a few months, when policyholders receive their insurance bill for 2025, they risk looking grim. They will, in fact, notice an increase of between 3% and 11%, depending on whether it concerns complementary health insurance, comprehensive home insurance (MRH) or automobile insurance. The Reinsure Me comparator estimates that average expenses to be insured should amount to 3,055 euros next year, or 254 euros per month, compared to 2,822 euros in 2024.

It is mutual health insurance which is expected to increase the most, with an increase in prices of 11%, while home and automobile insurance premiums are expected to increase by 5% and 4% respectively. The evolution varies depending on the profile of the household: for a family with two children, it will be necessary to count + 7.26% between 2023 and 2024, but the note will increase by 9.27% ​​for a retired couple.

The main reason is that claims were particularly numerous in 2023, and therefore insurers were required to intervene much more frequently. Last year, a large part of the regions of France and overseas suffered devastating climatic events: storms, floods, violent thunderstorms. Climate change is the cause, but not only that.

The urban riots in the summer of 2023 gave rise to multiple damages, notably to vehicles or street furniture, for a total cost of 793 million euros. Other types of losses are, moreover, on the rise, such as car thefts, which increased by 11.1% in 2023. Finally, there is a relatively stable, but high, number of burglaries (around 200,000 per year), according to France Assureurs, which brings together insurance companies.

The world of insurance is also dependent on the economic environment: to compensate people who have suffered a disaster, for example a fire or water damage, it is necessary to replace the damaged elements with new ones. However, with inflation, construction materials and automobile parts cost more. The amount of compensation for water damage has, for example, increased by 41% over the last ten years.

In terms of supplementary health insurance, price increases are explained by the ageing of the population. Added to this are the measures recently taken by the public authorities, such as the increase in general practitioners’ fees, or negotiations with laboratories and pharmacies. In total, this represents 1.2 billion euros of additional expenditure for supplementary health insurance. Finally, cyberattacks, which affected one in two companies in 2023, have also weighed on the financial results of insurance companies.

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