Groupama’s government bond share fell in every year of the past decade, from 39% of total assets in 2016 to 23% in 2025.
Almost none of the released capacity went into private markets, but rather into corporate credit and unit-linked contracts, according to figures published in the French group’s Solvency II filings.
The bond book turns towards credit
Government bonds fell from EUR 38.0bn in 2016 to EUR 23.6bn in 2025, a reduction of EUR 14.4bn, while corporate bonds rose from EUR 14.4bn to EUR 18.4bn.
The bond book as a whole shrank by EUR 10.3bn, so this was not a one for one swap, but the mix inside it changed. Government paper accounted for 71% of Groupama’s bonds in 2016 and 55% by 2025, while the share of corporate bonds rose from 27% to 43%.
Most of that shift happened in two separate years, and for what look like different reasons. In 2022 government bonds fell 22% while total assets fell 12%, as rates rose and valuations dropped across the portfolio. The balance sheet alone cannot say how much of that was revaluation and how much was selling. 2024 is harder to explain that way: total assets fell 1%, but government bonds fell 15% and corporate bonds rose 13%.
That shift carries a capital cost. Corporate bonds attract a spread risk charge under the standard formula, while EEA government bonds do not. The Groupama 2025 SFCR (page 52) shows where the risk now sits: market risk accounts for around 44% of the basic capital requirement before diversification, and the largest single contributor within it is credit risk on bonds issued by private companies, ahead of property, equity, interest rate and currency risk.
Risk moves towards the policyholder
Index-linked and unit-linked assets more than doubled, from EUR 8.1bn in 2016 to EUR 16.9bn in 2025 (up by 109%). The path was not smooth, with falls in 2018 and again in 2022. By 2025 the unit-linked book is the fourth largest block Groupama reports, behind government bonds, collective investment undertakings and corporate bonds.
Assets held against unit-linked contracts are matched by liabilities that move with them, so the market risk on that book sits with policyholders rather than with the group.
A rotation to alternative assets that did not happen
On the broad measure used across this series, which counts property, unlisted equities, other loans and mortgages, structured notes, collateralised securities and collective investment undertakings, investments in alternatives did not grow over the same period.
Their proportion of total assets fluctuated between 23% and 27% across the decade. The narrower direct measure of property, unlisted equities and other loans came to 4% or 5% in every year.
This is in contrast to peers such as Allianz whose reported collective investment undertakings ballooned to 32% in 2025 from only 2% of assets in 2016. Note that most of the Allianz shift was due to reclassification under Article 1(40) of the Solvency II Delegated Regulation rather than a portfolio move, as its own reports set out. Groupama’s line barely moved.
Nor is the collective investment line a private markets proxy here. Groupama’s 2025 investment income disclosure (2025 SFCR page 24) splits it into bond funds, equity funds and two lines of cash funds.
Shifting risk
The valuation section of the SFCR sets out how each balance sheet line is measured, but does not explain why the portfolio changed, so the quantitative disclosure is the only evidence available. What it shows is a group that took the weight of its sovereign holdings from 39% of assets to 23%, put more of the balance sheet into corporate credit, and moved a growing share of market risk onto policyholders, while leaving its exposure to private and alternative assets where it stood in 2016.
