Policy Brief
November 2025
PORTABILITY REFORM OF ASSURANCE VIE
Executive Summary
This briefing note sets out the case for introducing in France a right to transfer Assurance Vie contracts while preserving full tax seniority. Such a reform would modernise a core pillar of French long-term saving and align the system more closely with international standards of investor protection. For a UK audience unfamiliar with the product, Assurance Vie may be understood as broadly comparable to a life assurance investment bond combined with significant inheritance-planning advantages. As these functions are bundled within a single contractual wrapper, any restriction on mobility carries far greater consequences than in systems where these roles are separated, such as the UK.
1. Background and Context
Assurance Vie holds more than €2 trillion in household savings and functions as a uniquely versatile long-term savings vehicle. It allows individuals to invest tax-efficiently, to withdraw income or capital flexibly throughout their lifetime under favourable tax rules, and to transmit assets to their chosen beneficiaries — whether direct descendants or non-relatives — under highly advantageous succession arrangements.
There is no true UK equivalent to Assurance Vie. In the UK, tax-efficient investing, income planning and inheritance structuring are achieved through multiple separate vehicles. In France, all of these functions are concentrated within a single contract, which means that restrictions on mobility carry unusually severe consequences.
2. The Problem: Structural Captivity
A saver cannot transfer an Assurance Vie contract to a different insurer without losing the tax seniority already accumulated. In practical terms, transferring resets the tax “age” of the contract, meaning the individual forfeits tax advantages built up over many years. This would be highly unusual in comparable long-term savings and investment wrappers in other developed markets. The result is a condition of structural captivity: low mobility weakens competitive pressure, contributing to higher costs, slower innovation and a persistent divide between modern, lower-cost contracts and older, high-fee legacy ones.
3. Consequences for Savers
OECD and ESMA data show that French households face some of the highest fees in Europe on retail investment products. A difference of just one percentage point in annual charges can reduce final accumulated capital by around twenty percent over the long term. Many older Assurance Vie contracts are also heavily invested in euro funds—capital-protected portfolios managed by insurers that resemble with-profits funds in the UK but often with even less transparency. Between 2020 and 2023, these funds frequently delivered returns below inflation, leading to an erosion of real purchasing power. When ongoing product and management charges are added, this erosion often translates not merely into stagnation, but into a genuine real-terms loss of capital.
Because savers cannot change provider without losing accrued tax advantages, they are effectively unable to escape high-charging, underperforming arrangements—a situation that would be highly unusual in the UK or the United States.
4. International Comparison
Countries with more flexible long-term savings frameworks consistently deliver better outcomes for consumers:
United Kingdom: while insurance-based investment bonds themselves are not freely transferable investors can restructure investments and charging structures without losing broader inheritance and tax planning frameworks. In France, equivalent tax and succession advantages are permanently locked to a single provider.
Australia: the SuperStream regime introduced automatic cash-based pension transfers, strengthening competition and reducing administrative costs.
United States: 401(k) rollovers preserve tax treatment when moving between providers.
Ireland: PRSA and ARF structures offer transparent and efficient portability mechanisms.
As a result, France now stands apart among major developed economies in denying savers full external portability for its principal long-term savings wrapper.
5. French Legislative Background
In 2023, the French Senate adopted a proposal allowing Assurance Vie transfers without loss of tax seniority (the Husson–de Montgolfier bill). The reform did not progress to the National Assembly due to scheduling constraints rather than political rejection. Parliamentary analysis has already recognised the economic, fiscal and social merits of the measure.
A Senate vote carries institutional weight in the French system: it confirms that the reform is technically workable, cross-party and aligned with the public interest.
6. Technical Feasibility
Portable Assurance Vie is technically straightforward. Cash-based transfers on a fixed valuation date — the same mechanism already used for PER pension transfers — would avoid mismatched assets and minimise operational disruption.
Solvency II already provides a robust framework for insurer valuation methodologies, ensuring transparency and consistency. Insurers currently manage partial withdrawals, switches and arbitrages on a daily basis; portability would therefore extend existing operational processes rather than introduce fundamentally new ones.
7. Economic and Fiscal Impact
Portability would strengthen competition, reduce fees and improve long term outcomes for savers. Stronger net portfolio growth increases taxable gains over time, meaning the State ultimately benefits from higher fiscal receipts. Reform would also support more efficient allocation of household savings and reinforce confidence in regulated long-term investment products.
8. Main Recommendation
Introduce a right to full Assurance Vie portability, preserving tax seniority, through a standardised process applicable to all French-regulated Assurance Vie contracts, including those distributed on a cross-border basis within the European Union. The framework should be supervised by the ACPR and AMF (broadly equivalent to the PRA and FCA in the UK), and draw on existing pension transfer rules and the bank mobility mechanisms introduced under the Macron Law, while ensuring clear communication, consumer protection and appropriate safeguards for savers.
9. Conclusion
Assurance Vie portability is not a disruptive overhaul but a necessary modernisation. It would protect consumers, update a core savings product, strengthen competition, increase transparency and ensure that an essential element of French household finance remains fit for purpose.
No saver should be trapped in an outdated contract because a decades-old rule prevents them from moving to a better one.