A scheme taken out by an employer or an industry for its employees, covering death, incapacity and disability without individual underwriting.
A group protection scheme is a contract taken out by an employer, or negotiated at industry level, for the benefit of a group of employees defined by an objective category. Its central mechanism is compulsory membership, which removes antiselection and therefore allows individual medical underwriting to be dropped altogether: since nobody chooses to join, the insured population mirrors the workforce rather than those who know they are ill. It classically covers death, temporary incapacity, disability and sometimes long term care, and differs from supplementary health cover, which reimburses care. Its weakness is dependence on the employment relationship: cover ends with the contract of work, which portability and individual continuation arrangements soften without removing. The problem solved is the cost of access for an employee who, alone, would pay for medical underwriting, individual rating and acquisition costs out of all proportion to the contribution negotiated for ten thousand people.
France's Evin Act of December 31, 1989 requires benefits to be maintained for claimants already off work when the provider changes, and frames cancellation. The Constitutional Council, in its decision of June 13, 2013, struck down the designation clauses that imposed a single insurer on a whole industry, opening the way to mere recommendation and to competition among industry schemes.
contrat collectif de prévoyance, régime de branche