The right to switch insurance is only the beginning.

The Hamon law of 2014 gave policyholders the right to cancel motor, home and affinity insurance at any time after the first year, without fees¹. A 2019 law, in force since 1 December 2020, extended that right to complementary health insurance, including contracts already running¹. The Lemoine law of 2022 went further for loan insurance: the contract can be changed at any time, from the day the loan is signed¹.

Each text replaced a yearly exit window with a permanent exit. In principle, a household can now act on a better contract the day it finds one.

Home insurance gives the only before-and-after measure of the Hamon law. The annual cancellation rate was 12.7% in 2014 and 13.4% in 2015, the year after the law. That is about 400,000 additional cancellations². The insurers’ federation then stopped publishing the rate. No public measure of home insurance turnover in France has been released since 2015².

Motor is now the only line with a published turnover rate. In 2024, cancellations amounted to 14.0% of contracts³.

Health moved more. Among the insurers that answered the CCSF, France’s consultative committee for the financial sector, the rate of cancellation at the policyholder’s initiative rose from 9.54% in 2020 to 11.21% in 2021⁴. Mutual insurers, which hold most of this market, largely stayed out of the survey. The CCSF found that easier cancellation “did not lead to lower premiums”⁴ (our translation). Its report does not establish whether those who left moved to a cheaper offer or went without cover⁴.

Loan insurance shows the widest gap between intent and outcome. Requests to change insurer rose from 198,530 in 2021 to 496,654 in 2024⁵. Over the same period, the share of home loans covered by an external insurer, outside the banks’ own offers, went from 16% to 17.48%⁵.

The public record points to two obstacles. The first is the procedure. In a survey of 5,030 people conducted by Ipsos for the Défenseur des droits, France’s rights ombudsman, 61% said they had difficulties with administrative procedures, occasional or regular, against 39% in 2016. And 23% said they had given up a right they were entitled to at least once in the past five years⁶. The survey does not concern insurance. It measures the general weight of paperwork in France.

The second obstacle is the contract. In March 2026, the ACPR, France’s banking and insurance supervisor, reported on 196 mystery visits to ten networks selling revolving credit with loan insurance. 70% of visitors judged that the adviser had not been clear about the insurance⁷. Looking at refused claims in loan insurance, the CCSF pointed to “a very poor knowledge” of these contracts among policyholders⁸ (our translation).

These obstacles are easier to clear for some people than for others. In loan insurance, the CCSF measured who actually switches.

A right that requires time, reading and persistence is exercised first by those who have them.

The impact assessment for the Hamon law said the reform would be judged on changes in cancellation rates and average premiums. The Assemblée nationale’s 2016 report on the law’s application contains no figure on either⁹. Twelve years later, there is no public answer to whether the law met its goal.

An earlier CCSF assessment, published in 2020, holds one indication of what changes the result. In 2019, 84% of loan insurance switch requests handled by online platforms were completed, against 17% of those handled by local brokers⁸. Both worked under the same rules. The CCSF does not describe how the two groups differ, and part of the gap may come from the cases each one receives.

Read together, these sources are consistent. The law opened the exit. It did not walk anyone through it. A right that people do not exercise is not yet a right in practice. For it to become one, someone or something has to exercise it on the person’s side: read the contract, compare it, file the request and follow it to completion.