French life/health mutuals Humanis and AG2R La Mondiale in May 2018 announced they would merge their employee savings activities.

French “employee savings” plans (“plans d’épargne salariale”) come under two guises, PEE  – Plan d’épargne entreprise (“corporate savings plans”) and PERCO – Plan d’épargne pour la retraite collectif (“group pension savings plan”), and are tax-advantaged, employer-sponsored investment vehicles run by, but legally separate from, insurance groups or banks. Tax advantages are maximized when such plans are used to save the proceeds from mandatory corporate profit sharing arrangements, “intéressement” and “participation”.

Employee savings plans Inter Expansion-Fongepar (Humanis) and Prado Épargne (AG2R La Mondiale) already have secured the required regulatory agreements.. The resulting entity will manage about 600,000 individual accounts and just under six billion euros in assets. It will be 55% owned by Humanis and 15% by AG2R La Mondiale. CNP Assurances owns the remaining 30%.

The move occurs in the context of multiple mergers in the French insurance sector and particularly among mutual insurers as regulatory requirements and competition increase. AG2R La Mondiale in 2017 announced it would “join forces” with Matmut. Humanis in March 2018 said it had initiated discussions with Malakoff Méderic to merge certain activities, in particular in pensions.