An agreement between the French state, banks, insurers and patient groups organizing access to credit for people with an aggravated health risk.
The AERAS agreement is neither a statute nor an insurance contract but a market-wide accord between the French state, the banking federations, insurers and patient and consumer groups, whose purpose is to make credit accessible to people whom ordinary medical underwriting would turn away. It sets up a three level review: a file declined at standard level moves up to a specialist medical unit, then to a pool of reinsurers deciding as the last resort, each tier holding greater expertise and capacity. It then caps the cost for lower income borrowers through a capping mechanism funded by a common pool, and it carries a reference grid listing the conditions that must be insured at standard rates or at limited loading once a given period since the end of treatment has passed. Its annual reports serve as the public indicator for its monitoring committee. The problem solved is the de facto banking exclusion of people cured or stabilized, which was not a policy decision but the sum of individually defensible refusals.
Signed on July 6, 2006 and in force since January 6, 2007, the agreement succeeded the Belorgey accord of 2001. Its capping mechanism limits the total cost of the insurance to 1.4 points of the loan's effective rate for borrowers below an income ceiling, and its monitoring committee reports that more than nine out of ten files carrying an aggravated risk end up covered.
s'assurer et emprunter avec un risque aggravé de santé, dispositif risque aggravé