Borrower insurance, compulsory in fact, covers various risks such as death, illness or disability. It protects both borrowers and banks against possible default.
With the Lemoine law, which came into force on June 1 for new loans, those who borrow less than 200.000 euros are no longer subject to a health questionnaire to ensure their credit, on the condition also that the total repayment is made before their 60 year.
For people who are sick or have been sick recently, "you go from the impossible to the possible", greets AFP Kévin Spreux, development director of Prelys Courtage, the firm which accompanied Emma.
During her first attempt, she had to submit to a health questionnaire because the credit, over 25 years, took her precisely beyond 60 years. As expected, his file was refused.
The fact that she has been in remission since 2020 has not changed anything: "We keep a cancerous label", notes Emma, for whom the Lemoine law allows "to restore a little justice".
By reducing the loan period from 25 to 23 years, she was able to remain within the framework provided for by the legislation and obtain her loan.
General increase
Like her, many people have taken up this change in legislation to try to be better insured, testifies Prelys Courtage.
By insuring people who were previously excluded or whose files were accepted subject to the payment of an additional premium, insurers are however taking on a risk that they consider difficult to quantify.
This can "create a windfall effect for people knowing that they are going to die", cynically summed up the boss of a mutual insurer in front of journalists.
If some insurers have promised not to increase their rates, such as CNP Assurances, a subsidiary of the La Banque Postale group and leader in this market, or even to lower them for young people, such as Crédit Agricole, number two in borrower insurance, c is far from being the case for everyone.
Number of bonuses have increased. In what proportions? According to a study by the firm Vertone which compared 1.700 tariffs from non-bank insurers, before and after the passage of the law, the tariffs applied to borrowers who escape the health questionnaire jumped by 49% on average, with very strong disparities .
Olivier Le Gallo, managing director of the online broker Magnolia.fr, estimates for his part that this increase was more around 20%.
The new provisions of the law, such as the shortening of the right to be forgotten period, which exempts from declaring certain diseases five years after the cessation of therapeutic protocols against ten years previously, are "societal progress but which has a price" , he reports to AFP.
Boom calls
Another change in the law, with strong repercussions: the possibility of changing insurers at any time and no longer only during the first year and then on the anniversary date of the signing of the contract.
At Magnolia.fr, there was "a pretty incredible explosion of requests" with a tripling of calls in the first week of September, as soon as the new legislation applied to old loans, according to Mr. Le Gallo.
Borrower insurance is a market that is approximately 85% owned by banks, which make significant margins to the detriment of the purchasing power of borrowers, denounce for several years consumer associations and insurers themselves.
At the beginning of October, the European insurance regulator also pointed out bank insurers, citing "significant risks of harm to the consumer" and "insufficient management of conflicts of interest".
Terminating a contract taken out via a bank for the benefit of a traditional insurer can save several thousand, or even tens of thousands of euros, without reducing risk coverage since this change can only be made with equivalent protection.
And the banks that were dragging their feet before now play "the game and are reactive" since these legislative upheavals, notes Mr. Le Gallo.