Digital insurance: BELFIUS aims to build a European champion from Belgium

For years, Europe’s innovation debate focused on the continent’s ability to produce more startups. Belfius Insurance’s acquisition of Leocare invites us to consider the problem from a different angle. The question may no longer be whether Europe can create technology companies, but who will be capable of consolidating them and financing them at continental scale.

By announcing the acquisition of French insurtech Leocare, Belfius is completing its first acquisition outside Belgium and openly signalling its European ambitions, following its earlier investment in Alan. The Belgian group, owned by the federal government, considers France a priority market for developing its digital-insurance expertise. With nearly €200 billion in premiums collected each year, France is Europe’s second-largest insurance market, while retaining a level of digitalisation that Belfius believes still falls short of consumer expectations.

The transaction also marks the beginning of a new phase for European insurance: consolidation.

Leocare is not a young startup still experimenting with its model. Founded in 2017 by Christophe Dandois and Noureddine Bekrar, the company has raised more than $133 million from investment funds and established itself as one of the most visible players in French digital insurance. In 2022, it claimed 160,000 policyholders and €44.2 million in revenue. At the time, the company aimed to reach €100 million in annual revenue rapidly. Like many businesses of its generation, however, it has had to contend with an environment radically different from the one prevailing during its earliest funding rounds: rising interest rates, scarcer venture capital and increasing customer-acquisition costs.

This evolution probably explains why the acquisition deserves to be examined from a financial perspective as much as an industrial one. Belfius’s announcement highlights an impressive figure: 1.3 million users of the Leocare application. Yet another indicator has disappeared from the official communication: the number of active policyholders. The distinction is far from trivial. In insurance, economic value depends less on the number of downloads than on the number of policies held, the volume of premiums collected and the profitability of the customer portfolio. The gap between the 160,000 policyholders reported in 2022 and the 1.3 million users announced today is wide enough to raise questions.

Applying the growth rates observed among the leading European companies in the sector to Leocare’s historical figures suggests that it could now have between 250,000 and 400,000 active policyholders. Such a range would remain consistent with its development trajectory and could bring it close to, or above, the €100 million revenue target set several years ago. Yet no recent financial figures have been disclosed. This absence is all the more notable because Belfius has not revealed the acquisition price either.

This discretion raises another question for Leocare’s existing investors. The company belongs to the generation of insurtechs that benefited from abundant capital between 2018 and 2022. For the funds that backed it, this transaction now represents a real-world test. Will it generate attractive returns? Is this an exceptional exit, or simply a respectable one? Without a publicly disclosed valuation, it is impossible to measure the value created over the company’s nine-year history.

The acquisition also raises a recurring question within the French ecosystem. Why does France regularly produce companies attractive enough to be acquired, yet relatively few players capable of leading such transactions themselves?

Leocare joins an already long list of French technology companies that reached significant scale before being acquired by a foreign group or financed primarily by international capital. In this case, the buyer is neither American nor British, but Belgian. The symbolism is worth noting. While debates over technological sovereignty often focus on cloud infrastructure, semiconductors or artificial intelligence, this transaction is a reminder that sovereignty also depends on the ability to consolidate markets.

This is precisely the role Belfius is playing. The group is not merely acquiring a brand or a technology. It is acquiring a customer base, regulatory expertise in the French market, a network of more than 750 partners and brokers, and an operational distribution platform. More importantly, it is gaining control of a strategic asset: data. The announced synergies primarily concern risk pricing, data utilisation and the development of new products.

This dimension is essential because insurance is gradually becoming an algorithm-driven industry. The quality of pricing models, the ability to detect fraud, the personalisation of policies and the automation of claims management increasingly depend on control over data. In this context, achieving European scale is no longer merely a commercial objective, but a condition for remaining competitive.

The transaction could therefore be interpreted as the first visible move in a broader strategy. Belfius describes Leocare as the first stage of its European development. Nothing currently suggests that this expansion will stop at France. On the contrary, the economic rationale behind the acquisition suggests that a company seeking to pool data, technology and underwriting capabilities could be tempted to repeat the model in other European countries.

Leocare’s story therefore says less about the future of French digital insurance than about the emergence of a new generation of European consolidators. For two decades, Europe sought to create more startups. The coming decade may belong to the players capable of bringing them together. Viewed from this perspective, the acquisition of Leocare may represent less the end of an entrepreneurial journey than the beginning of a continental strategy in which Belfius hopes to become one of the principal architects.