The slumbering giant: towards a political economy of financialised insurance

This paper introduces the concept of financialised insurance through an analysis of the European insurance sector in the context of recent capitalist restructuring. It addresses a notable gap in the political economy literature, which has examined the spread of profit-driven financial logic across various sectors of society and the economy—including within finance itself—yet has largely overlooked one of its most significant actors: Insurance companies. Drawing on firm- and sector-level data, we trace the uneven emergence of a financialised insurance model that has both displaced and coexisted with traditional insurance practices. In doing so, the paper challenges the industry’s self-image as a countercyclical stabiliser and shows how the insurance sector has selectively adopted financialised practices across countries and business segments. The paper makes two key contributions to the financialisation debate and political economy more broadly. First, it offers the first meso-level, sectoral analysis of insurance financialisation. Second, it advances the operationalisation of financialisation by identifying five key dimensions of financialised insurance.