European Insurers Support Savings & Investments Union to Boost Innovation

Insurance Europe supports the European Commission’s ambition to build a Savings and Investments Union. It will continue to develop proposals and participate in discussions to ensure the success of this initiative.

The insurance industry welcomes the EC ambition to establish a SIU. In its views submitted, Insurance Europe sets out recommendations that would enable the sector to deepen its contribution to the SIU objectives to help mobilise savings and investments in the EU. Beinsure Media has selected the most important points from the report.

The insurance sector plays a crucial role in achieving the SIU’s goals by offering protection, helping people save for retirement, and investing significantly in the EU economy.

Frédéric de Courtois, Insurance Europe’s President

Insurers hold $9.5 tn in assets, including equity, corporate, and sovereign bonds. They are also significant employers (see TOP 50 Insurance companies in the US & Canada: Assets & Revenue).

Key Highlights

• Insurers are major investors and are crucial for mobilizing long-term investments, especially for growth and innovation.
• By enhancing financial education and offering secure savings products, insurers can increase retail participation in capital markets.
• Simplifying regulations and reducing fragmentation in insolvency laws are vital to facilitating cross-border investments and boosting competitiveness.
• Increasing investment in infrastructure, venture capital, and SME funding is essential for sustainable economic growth and job creation.
• Partnerships and strategic collaboration between public and private sectors can help attract institutional investment and reduce risk barriers.

Investing forms a core part of the insurance business model

Insurers offer savings and retirement products that include guarantees and risk coverage, meeting consumer needs through various distribution channels.

Increasing retail savings through insurance products, coupled with regulatory improvements, will significantly advance the SIU’s objectives (see Largest Insurance Companies in Europe 2025).

To fully further unlock the potential of insurance in helping realise the SIU, Insurance Europe makes recommendations in three key areas:

1. Boost retail savings and investment
2. Increase insurers’ ability to invest in line with SIU objectives
3. Ensure a competitive, growth-friendly regulatory environment

Savings and Investments Union boosts financial opportunities

The savings and investments union (SIU) aims to create better financial opportunities for EU citizens, while enhancing our financial system’s capability to connect savings with productive investments.

This will lead to more choice for savers who wish to grow their household wealth and allow businesses across Europe to grow.

The savings and investments union is a horizontal enabler that will create a financing ecosystem to benefit investments in the EU’s strategic objectives.

Alexander Sarrigeorgiou, Insurance Europe’s Vice-president

Europe’s capacity to address current challenges – such as climate change, rapid technological shifts and new geopolitical dynamics – demands significant investments, which the Draghi report estimates at an additional €750‑800 bn per year by 2030, and which is further impacted by increased defence needs.

Much of these additional investment needs relate to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and innovative companies, which cannot rely solely on bank financing (see Largest Banks by Assets and Deposits in the U.S. in 2025).

By developing integrated capital markets – alongside an integrated banking system – the SIU can effectively connect savings and investment needs.

Recommendations for Enhancing the SIU

The following measures can support retail investment and boost the SIU:

• Implement the Retail Investment Strategy (RIS) to simplify retail access to investment products.
• Enhance financial education to raise awareness of savings needs, such as through pension dashboards.
• Introduce or strengthen tax incentives to encourage retirement savings.
• Exchange best practices among member states to promote successful national products.
• Address issues with the Pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP) to make it more attractive.
• Share successful approaches to automatic enrollment in pension schemes.

Regulatory Considerations

The regulatory environment must support insurers’ competitiveness and contribution to the EU’s innovation and growth goals. Simplifying regulations and minimizing additional burdens will help maintain the industry’s strength.

The focus should be on improving existing frameworks like Solvency II, RIS, and FIDA while respecting the flexibility of national supervisory authorities.

To increase investment in assets crucial for growth and innovation (e.g., equities, venture capital, SME debt, infrastructure), insurers recommend the following:

• Properly calibrate Solvency II Review Level 2 to balance risk and investment potential.
• Reduce fragmentation in insolvency laws to facilitate cross-border investments.
• Promote public-private partnerships to attract institutional investment and reduce investment risks.
• Scale up national funds to increase access to venture capital and SME financing.
• Adjust capital requirements for securitizations under Solvency II and simplify due diligence.
• Address IFRS disincentives that discourage equity and venture capital investments.

The role of the SIU in EU Insurance market growth

The SIU, if designed properly, could foster growth by mobilizing savings and investments. This is vital as Europe faces investment demands linked to green and digital transformations. The SIU aims to enhance household wealth and expand business financing opportunities.

By leveraging insurance products, Europe can drive long-term investment, bolster economic stability, and create high-quality jobs.

The insurance sector is well-positioned to help meet these goals, given its record of resilience and its role in the economy. Enhancing retail savings through insurance products, supported by regulatory improvements, will make a substantial contribution to the SIU’s success.

How the European insurance sector already contributes to achieving the SIU objectives

Providing protection to EU citizens and businesses

Insurance is a key enabler of modern living. It provides citizens and businesses with financial protection in the event of adverse events and offers mechanisms to manage, mitigate and cope with the risks they face.

The availability of insurance cover is a precondition for all economic sectors to manage and mitigate the growing risks their face. Indeed, risk-taking is necessary for businesses to grow and innovate, and insurers enable them to do so.

Thus, Europe will only succeed in creating an economic future based on growth and innovation if the insurance and reinsurance sector can continue to play its role as a key facilitator.

Insurance products boost retail participation in capital markets and help tackle demographic challenges Insurers play a very significant role in the provision of pension and savings across the EU.

They provide retirement savings products, occupational pension and insurance-based investment products (IBIPs); in fact insurance products represent the largest portion of retail investment in Europe (70%), thus having a crucial role in the development of the SIU.

Insurance products can help retail customers invest long-term

Insurers offer a variety of products enabling people with different risk profiles to invest in capital markets. This includes products with high levels of safety, e.g. through profit-sharing and guaranteed products, and in doing so insurers serve the needs of the many small savers who would otherwise not have the confidence to invest at all due to fear of losing their money.

Insurance products can help retail customers invest long-term, prepare for old age, and at the same time provide them with safety due to additional features and benefits.

These include financial guarantees and coverage against a variety of health or work related risks, such as longevity, death, hospitalisation, inability to work or unemployment – elements that many consumers value and look for, and which are key to their investment decisions.

Insurance savings products are available to retail investors through multiple distribution channels, like agents, brokers, bancassurance, or directly through insurance companies themselves. Having a wide choice of distribution allows consumers to have broad access to investment.

One of the largest long-term institutional investors

The insurance industry is one of Europe’s largest institutional investors and an important provider of stable, long-term funding for governments and businesses.

Insurers are therefore uniquely positioned to contribute to sustainable economic growth and to help finance digitalisation and transition to a carbon-neutral, more sustainable and resilient economy.

Investing is a consequence of the insurance business model: policyholders pay premiums upfront, which insurers then invest to meet future claims and benefits.

Insurers’ business model allows them to have a long-term investment time horizon, which includes focussing on the long-term performance of assets, investing in illiquid assets and acting as a countercyclical buffer.

These advantages benefit the economy and also allow insurers to better invest for the benefit of their customers, thereby contributing to reducing the pension gap.

Insurance companies invest in a broad range of assets. Most of these assets are allocated to investment funds, government bonds, corporate bonds and equity.

These four categories make up 88% of all investments.

• Government and corporate bonds are often favoured by insurers as instruments able to provide cash flow or duration-matching of their assets and liabilities. Via these investments, insurers play a significant role in supplying the funding needs of governments and businesses.
• Public equities, which are a core source of corporate financing through the capital markets and which play an important and not easily replaced role in society.
• Insurers also provide long-term funding via investment in infrastructure, real estate, securitisations, mortgages, private equity and venture capital, the last two being key instruments for funding innovation.
• Insurers would like to increase their allocations to these investments to expand the diversification of their portfolios and enhance returns for customers.

What measures can help the insurance sector

The insurance industry has identified a number of opportunities and recommends the following actions under the scope of the SIU project to increase retail savings, diversify funding for EU businesses and create an environment for companies to grow.

There are currently behavioural, practical and regulatory barriers that need to be overcome to increase retail participation in capital markets.

Looking at the behavioural barriers, many Europeans underestimate their need to invest for retirement; they often lack the confidence, knowledge, or interest in directly investing in the capital markets.

Many Europeans also tend to be highly concerned about the safety of their savings and the risks of investing directly.

As many have limited resources and ability to withstand losses, this concern is understandable. This is confirmed in Insurance Europe’s Pan-European Pension Survey where by far the safety of the money invested was the highest priority of the representative samples of respondents.

Another barrier to investing is the fact that potential investors can be put off by the overload of information providers are required to give them and by the long and un-appealing process they are required to go through based on the EU legislative framework.

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