On September 21, 2026, a document signed by France's Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) Insurance Sub-Committee Chairman J.-P. FAUGÈRE approved the establishment of Florence Ré. This is a reinsurance captive established by its parent company, French timber enterprise Piveteaubois. Piveteaubois is a local family enterprise based in Vendée, France, specializing in softwood sawn timber, Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), and wood pellet fuel, with production facilities in both France and Poland.

Following its establishment, the captive will primarily insure property risks at the group's three production sites in France (Vendée, Corrèze) and Poland — covering factory buildings, long-span steel structures, and production equipment — as well as fire and storm losses at open-air log stockyards and finished lumber storage (timber, with its high stacking and flammability, faces stringent commercial insurance underwriting terms). Reportedly, the windstorm catastrophe losses suffered by the group from consecutive winter storms in western France (Benjamin, Goretti, Nils) during 2025-2026 were a major factor in the group's decision to establish a dedicated captive.

Under Article L.350-2 of the French Insurance Code, domestic captives are explicitly defined as reinsurance captives. A captive must be headquartered in France, owned by non-insurance / non-banking enterprises, and authorized only to provide reinsurance protection to the parent company and its affiliates. In November 2024, ACPR published the "Reinsurance Captive Information Guide," clarifying the application and approval process for establishing domestic captives in France. Under the relevant provisions, the period from submission of an application to completion of approval is six months.

France's captive market has grown rapidly in recent years. The first driver is the "Resilience Reserve" tax benefit mechanism introduced in the 2023 fiscal reforms, allowing captives to accrue tax-exempt reserves in profitable years to smooth cross-cycle claim payments — up to 90% of a captive's annual technical profit can be set aside as a catastrophe reserve before tax, with a total reserve cap of 10 times the average minimum capital requirement over the preceding three years. The second driver is the proportional regulatory exemption. Reinsurance captives with assets below €4 billion are classified as "small non-complex captives," qualifying for a full exemption from quarterly Solvency II quantitative reports, with minimum paid-up capital of only €1.3 million. Third, since 2023, Europe has entered a new hard property insurance cycle, with rising premiums compounded by catastrophe losses — the core external driver pushing French enterprises to densely establish domestic captives. The table below shows the premium increases for selected lines of business:

As of October 2026, ACPR had 30 actively operating domestic reinsurance captives on its register, spanning agri-food, infrastructure engineering, outdoor manufacturing, and forestry processing sectors. Nearly 10 additional industrial group projects are currently queued for approval.

For more details: 23 New Captives in 4 Years: How France Reactivated Its Domestic Captive Market

Source: China Captive Review