#MARKETS & INVESTING
French households are said to be afraid of the stock market, unlike their neighbours. In the euro area's financial accounts, the share of listed shares in their financial wealth is the European average, to within a tenth of a point.
Published on August 24, 2026 · to be rechecked on June 30, 2027
At the end of 2024, French households, including non-profit institutions serving them, held 7,088 billion euros of financial assets, of which 320 billion in directly held listed shares: 4.5%. For the euro area as a whole, the same ratio stands at 4.6%, or 1,552 billion out of 34,120 billion. The gap is 0.1 percentage point. On deposits, the comparison even runs the other way: 29.7% of French household financial wealth sits in currency and deposits, against 31.7% on average across the euro area. The French peculiarity lies elsewhere: insurance and pension entitlements account for 31.0% of financial wealth in France against 26.6% in the euro area. That is the weight of life insurance, whose guaranteed-fund component is invested mainly in bonds.
Do French households hold fewer listed shares than their euro-area neighbours?
No, or barely: 4.5% of their financial wealth against 4.6% for the euro area at end-2024. They do hold relatively fewer deposits and markedly more insurance and pension entitlements.
In other words: the French problem is not a stronger aversion to equities than elsewhere, it is that savings flow through a vehicle, guaranteed-fund life insurance, which invests mostly in bonds.
Four caveats, because they matter
- The figure counts only directly held shares (item F511 of the financial accounts). Shares held through investment funds or through unit-linked life insurance are excluded: real equity exposure is higher, in both areas.
- A share of wealth is not a share of holders. This ratio says nothing about how many households own shares: a few heavily exposed portfolios are enough to carry the average.
- The 20-country euro area aggregates very heterogeneous situations. Matching the European average does not mean matching Germany, or the Netherlands, whose savings structures differ sharply from France's.
- These are market-value stocks at end-2024. A year of strong equity gains mechanically inflates the share of shares, without a single household buying one more.
Why it still matters: blaming weak equity financing on a cultural timidity specific to French savers misses what the financial accounts actually measure. For a given level of wealth, they hold as many listed shares as the euro-area average. What differs is the pipe their savings travel through.
For you
- Did you assume French households held markedly fewer listed shares than their European neighbours?
- Do you know what share of your own savings is invested in equities, directly or through a fund or life insurance policy?
Source: Eurostat, annual sector financial balance sheets (ESA 2010), series nasa_10_f_bs, consolidated asset stocks of households and non-profit institutions serving households (S14_S15), France and euro area 20, end-2024, data updated 22 August 2026; Ze Finance calculations.
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