A reprimand and a fine of 1 million euros: here is the sanction imposed on the mutual MGEN, a subsidiary of the Vyv group, for breaches of its death guarantees, which cover funeral expenses in particular. Main grievance: searches for deceased members not systematic enough…
When cumbersome old files come up… The banking and insurance policeman, the Prudential Control and Resolution Authority (ACPR), announced this week that it had singled out MGEN for its old death guarantees. More specifically, it is MGEN Vie, a structure without any employees controlled by MGEN, which has been sanctioned: the activity of this structure insuring 3 million people has long been based on two death guarantees, a funeral expenses benefit and death disability benefit (PID) .
The first, the funeral expenses insurancewhich is not strictly funeral cover underlines the MGEN, was intended to cover these costs in the event of the death of the insured or of a beneficiary up to a ceiling of 800 euros. This guarantee has not been marketed since 2018. The PID guarantee aims to ensure the payment of capital to a designated beneficiary in the event of death or loss of autonomy.
Funeral insurance: hidden costs and misinformed clients
But the ACPR Sanctions Committee points both to serious shortcomings in informing members when marketing these two services, but also and above all to shortcomings in the search for beneficiaries. In short: the mutual belatedly and incompletely implemented its obligation to detect deceased policyholders. It thus only began to query the Agira file – dedicated to death searches – at the end of 2015. These reproaches by the ACPR relate more specifically to part of the files, i.e. around 23,000 PID guarantees whose management had been delegated to a service provider , and 460,000 funeral expenses guarantees, the management of which was again delegated: these contracts had been excluded from the so-called Agira 1 and Agira 2 searches.
The ACPR nevertheless notes the corrections made by MGEN, and the fact that the mutual insurance company had carried out a compliance project before this inspection by the banking and insurance police.
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This sanction comes one month after the announcement of a fine of 8 million euros against Mutex, a subsidiary of the Vyv group, for shortcomings in the search for beneficiaries of retirement contracts.
An incident during the inspection
An anecdote is hidden in the document published by the ACPR. During the audit, in 2018-2019, an email from the head of the audit mission was sent to MGEN Vie by mistake. There was the following sentence: they are not very honest and since they are in bad faith, they must be pushed to their limits. A new head of mission was then appointed.