The Observatoire de l’Epargne Européenne (OEE) launches an index measuring the performance of French households’ financial savings .

The methodology is based on traditional methodology used for the calculation of stock indices and has been developed in consultation with Banque de France and AFG (both founding members of the OEE). All the source data used are publicly available and come from either Banque de France or France Assureurs.

The index will be calculated quarterly by IEM Finance, an independent consultancy firm specialised in conception, management and calculation of stock indices. The index is calculated under the sole responsibility of the OEE and does involve the member institutions’ one.

OEE index measuring the performance of French households’ financial savings should allow:

• to highlight the contribution of each asset class to global performance of households’ financial savings;
• to raise awareness of the importance of additional long-term saving in a context of ageing population and reform of public pay-as-you-go pension schemes;
• to raise awareness of the importance of diversification in an environment of rising inflation and interest rates.

First simulations over the past ten years show:

• an annual average performance of the index equal to 2.14% over the period;
• over the same period of time the value of households’ financial wealth increase by 3.95% per year on average, meaning that market effects contributed to more than half of this increase;
• on average, equity products contributed to nearly half of the performance of the index, whereas their weight in the index was below 20%;
• over 10 years, there has been eight quarters (from 2nd quarter of 2018 to 2nd quarter of 2019 and the first three quarters of 2022) during which the index annual growth rate was lower than inflation;
• changes in the weight of each asset class in households’ portfolio remain small ones and therefore have few impact on global performance of the index