French public reinsurer wholly owned by the State, providing an unlimited last-resort guarantee for catastrophic risks deemed uninsurable by the private market alone.
The Caisse centrale de réassurance (CCR) is a joint-stock company wholly owned by the French state, created in 1946 and given a special mission of reinsuring risks deemed uninsurable by the market. It plays a pivotal role in two compensation schemes: the CatNat scheme for natural disasters (established in 1982) and the GAREAT mechanism for terrorism risk (since 2002). For both schemes, CCR benefits from an explicit and unlimited state guarantee, enabling it to accept reinsurance commitments that no private reinsurer could bear without a ruin risk in extreme scenarios. In practice, non-life insurers can cede all or part of their CatNat and terrorism losses to CCR beyond a certain retention, in exchange for a reinsurance premium. CCR also manages, on behalf of the state, the accumulated provisions and reserves, which it invests on financial markets. In 2024, following the increase in the CatNat surcharge from 12 to 20 percent, CCR began rebuilding reserves after several years of technical deficit. CCR also operates as a commercial reinsurer in international markets to diversify revenues and maintain its actuarial expertise, but its state-guaranteed commitments are distinctly identified.
In 2022, a series of exceptionally intense clay shrink-swell episodes generated a technical deficit for the CatNat scheme, reducing CCR reserves by approximately 46 percent from their 2015 level. The increase in the CatNat surcharge to 20 percent on 1 January 2025, decided by decree following a Senate report, allowed CCR to return to a positive technical result in 2025, its first balanced year since 2016.
CCR, Caisse centrale de réassurance