Today, online banks (see here) are tending to diversify in order to be able to offer an increasingly broad offer, in order to compete head-on with their elders, the historical French banks, such as Crédit Lyonnais or Société Générale. It should be remembered that originally, online banks were above all on the current account niche, offering a cheap and quick to subscribe offer.
This is what differentiated them from the big banks: the attractive rates and online subscription, without an appointment. But now, they have diversified into offerings such as credit, savings, the stock market and insurance. Most now offer life insurance products, whereas a few years ago very few offered this type of service to their customers.
3 leaders in this niche
In life insurance, ING Direct, Boursorama and Fortuneo are the leaders. The first, ING Direct, which is the leader in the online banking market in France, reported an increase of nearly 12% in 2016 in this niche. The orange bank claimed, still that same year, more than 4 billion euros in outstandings, with a total of 120,000 contracts thanks to its insurer Generali.
Boursorama, which is also one of the juggernauts of French online banking, communicated an outstanding amount of 3.9 billion euros last year, also with the insurer Generali. As for Fortuneo, which is however far behind its two competitors in online banking, managed to climb the first step of the podium last year by claiming between 4.2 and 6 billion in assets, with the insurer Suravenir, taking nearly 30% market share.
2 actors who manage to pull out of the game
Behind these three heavyweights, we observe two online banks which nevertheless manage to hold their own in the online life insurance sector, these are BforBank and Monabanq, BforBank having witnessed a progression around 30% in 2016 on its life insurance product linked to Generali. Monabanq’s figures were not communicated by the online bank.
A sector that attracts many players
Note that the life insurance sector, which is particularly lucrative for banks, in the same way as mortgages, is attracting new players. Thus, we have seen the emergence of a host of new companies that have stormed this sector in the hope of grabbing some market share.
We have seen, for example, happen WeSave And Grisbee in 2016, but also Ethic Vie and MonCapital the previous year. There is no doubt that this sector will continue to attract many players who will compete for it given its very lucrative aspect.
This sector clearly shows the turning point that the French banking landscape is taking, which is now organized around historic banks, online banks, but also banking and financial applications. These different types of players also seem to converge their offers and services, in the direction of dematerialization, in order to be able to meet the new expectations of consumers who are increasingly connected.
