Caisse centrale de réassurance (CCR)

CCR, the Caisse centrale de réassurance (literally the central reinsurance fund), is France's public reinsurer: a corporation wholly owned by the French state, created in 1946 with a mandate to reinsure risks the market deems uninsurable. Two compensation schemes run through it: the CatNat scheme for natural disasters (established in 1982) and the GAREAT mechanism for terrorism risk (since 2002). For both schemes, CCR has an explicit, unlimited state guarantee, which lets it take on commitments no private reinsurer could carry without risking ruin in an extreme scenario. The CatNat mechanics are easy to state. The property insurer collects the CatNat surcharge on each policy, cedes a share to CCR on a quota share basis, and buys a stop loss on top that protects it above an annual retention. In this way P&C insurers cede all or part of their CatNat and terrorism losses above a retention to CCR, for a reinsurance premium. Nothing forces them to, but no private offer comes with a state guarantee, and almost the whole market goes through it. CCR also manages the reserves built up on the state's behalf and invests them in the markets. It is often confused with CCR Re, its former commercial arm, and with the Barnier fund, which pays for prevention rather than claims. In 2025, the first year of the increase in the CatNat surcharge from 12 to 20 percent, CCR began rebuilding reserves after several years of technical deficit. CCR long ran a commercial reinsurance business as well, spun off in 2016 as CCR Re and sold to SMABTP and MACSF between 2023 and 2025; it now focuses on its public mandates. Each year it publishes the loss studies and hazard models the market uses as its benchmark for drought and flood.