3 November 2014
CNP Assurances has noted the decision of the Sanctions Committee of the French financial services supervisor, ACPR, concerning the processing of unclaimed life insurance settlements relating to insureds whose death dates back prior to 2007.
This decision comes even as CNP Assurances has made significant efforts to deal with an exceptional situation.
Customers can rest assured that CNP Assurances is fully focused on resolving this issue and that, thanks to the resources and procedures deployed in the past several years, there is no risk of this situation recurring.
The decision concerns unclaimed insurance settlements due to the beneficiaries of insureds who died prior to 2007. Before the Act of 17 December 2007 entered the statute book, it was up to the beneficiaries of a life insurance policy to contact the insurer and claim the settlement due to them. For their part, the insurance companies had no way of finding out whether an insured had died if no claim was filed. It was therefore inevitable that all life insurers would be faced with a growing backlog of unclaimed settlements. At CNP Assurances, the backlog was particularly large due to the Group’s long history as a life insurer and the size of its business.
This situation, whatever the reasons for it, was unacceptable.
Lawmakers have intervened several times since 2007 to give insurers the legal and practical means of finding out when policyholders have died. Nonetheless, identifying and tracing beneficiaries in order to pay the amounts due to them turned out to be far more difficult than we expected in 2008. That’s why we have gradually increased the resources deployed to deal with this exceptional situation.
In particular, we believe it's important to note that since the end of 2012, the resources deployed to resolve unclaimed settlements have been increased five-fold. A 60-person team is now working full time to deal with the backlog of unclaimed settlements dating back prior to 2007, with the systematic help of accredited investigators, allowing us to affirm that all remaining files will have been processed by 31 December 2015.
CNP Assurances would like to emphasize that at no time did it consider excluding any beneficiaries from its searches. On the contrary, the aim has always been to pay all unclaimed settlements, without exception.
CNP Assurances would also like to reiterate that it has never derived any profit from these unclaimed settlements: the income generated by investing the funds is not kept by the Group but is added to the sum shared by all policyholders, as is the case for all life insurance policies.
Lastly, thanks to the resources and procedures deployed over the past several years to quickly identify deceased insureds and actively search for their beneficiaries, a situation such as the one that arose concerning insureds who died prior to 2007 could never recur. CNP Assurances reaffirms that our teams are fully engaged in serving policyholders and their beneficiaries.