Beppe Scienza, professor of mathematics at the University of Turin, and products for successful savers
Beppe Scienza, professor in the mathematics department of the University of Turin and ombudsman for Italian savers, argues that life insurance policies for savers should be avoided. Because their name inspires security even if they don't have any. And in this conversation with Open explains why they are not as safe as they seem.
Professor Science, why is zero rating applied to life insurance policies for savers? They succeed. A portal that compares 2,200 has even been online for a few days.
Useless comparisons, to be avoided from the outset for two reasons. The first is that they present themselves as insurance, but do not cover any accidents like the real ones, for fires, health costs, etc. Calling them insurance instills a belief in security, which they do not provide. Some can and have in the past resulted in losses, just like investing in the stock market.
So are you making this a nominalist question?
However, names also matter. But the second level of criticism is on the merits: the total lack of transparency of their investments, the high costs and often difficult to decipher, the time constraints imposed and above all the complexity of their mechanisms. To complete the picture, disappointing past results. See an account unit from Mediolanum, where the customer paid 114 thousand euros in 2019 and got back around 103 thousand. A nominal loss of 10% and real loss of around 22%. And it's certainly not the worst case scenario.
But why does he also criticize reevaluable policies, those called first class, which are a safe bet anyway?
First of all, precisely because they are not as safe as they seem: there is no defense against inflation and in fact, in 2022, they suffered real and unrecovered losses of l around 7%. Then the companies get the lion's share of the profits. See a reevaluable policy where Banco BPM has swallowed up 1.3% of its annual profitability, leaving the saver with a paltry 0.56% before taxes.
But why then do they succeed?
Because the sellers, so-called consultants, push them in all directions since they are more expensive, more restrictive and less transparent than the UCITS themselves. So more practical for banks and networks, obviously to the detriment of customers. But this is not obvious because they are complicated and opaque. It is for this reason that, in collaboration with the University of Turin and Adusbef, I have created the webinar “Life insurance policies for investing savings” for October 30, where we will try to explain how these so-called fonts work. You can register for free at this address.
