The intervention program in support of Eurovita could soon be defined.
Yesterday, yet another meeting was held between the banks placers more involved in the distribution of the products of the company ended up in extraordinary administration and an agreement has been reached. Now the ball goes into insurance field. At this point, the big names in the policies will have to find the final compromise as soon as possible, within the next week, so that each bank can then submit the hypothesis of an agreement to its own boards. In the document drawn up yesterday, according to some sources, the banks asked for some "small corrective conditions", a sort of fine-tuning, to find a rebalancing of the charges and to make the operation more balanced, from their point of view.
The number of banks participating in the agreement rises to 15
As is known, the system rescue involves the division of Eurovita into five, with the sale of similar business branches to the big market players (Generali, Poste Vita, Intesa Sanpaolo Vita, Unipol and Allianz) with the placers who should take on any customer redemptions.
Redemptions which have currently been blocked by IVASS as at 30 June, but which if an agreement is not reached in time between the parties could be moved a month or maybe two.
Meanwhile, the placing banks (the most exposed) have risen to 15, with a weight of over 90% of the total amount of policies, which signed the agreement yesterday, Thursday 25 May. To support the five most involved groups (Intesa, Fineco, Fideuram, Credem and Sparkasse), realities such as Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra, Banca Popolare Puglia e Basilicata, the Iccrea Group and Cassa Centrale have joined Bcc and savings banks involved, but also Banca Profilo and Banca Consulia, just to name a few.
The action of the banks is based on an advance of the liquidity necessary to repay the policyholders the redemption value of the policies (which would be the responsibility of the incoming company) and receiving in exchange the securities underlying the insurance contract (which are often capital losses).
Tough times for life insurance
The Eurovita crisis does not come at the most propitious moment for the life insurance sector which suffers from competition from other higher-yield products (in particular from BTPs, BoTs and deposit accounts). Second the data disclosed by Ania, Life policies closed the first three months of 2023 with negative net inflows of €4,8 billion, down by more than €10 billion compared to the first quarter of 2022. In particular, in the first quarter of the year the companies recorded (premiums collected) equal to 25 billion which, however, did not offset the outgoings (payments for surrenders, annuities and claims due dates) equal to 2 billion.
