After home insurance, car insurance and even school insurance, here is what we could call “caddy insurance”. The Carrefour brand, in partnership with the insurer CNP Assurances, announced this week that it was launching a “purchasing power guarantee”. An insurance product, intended to help beneficiaries “to meet their required expenses in the event of accidental hospitalization, total temporary incapacity, loss of employment or disability (loss of autonomy)”. “It’s about protecting household food budgets during life events that can lead to loss of income,” Carrefour explained to our colleagues from Le Parisien.
In detail, this new service is available in two options. One, called “Courses Protect’”, at 2.90 or 3.90 euros per month, offers customers affected by incapacity to work or loss of employment a voucher valid in Carrefour stores ranging from 75 to 150 euros per month (for nine months). In the event of severe disability or loss of autonomy, the guarantee takes the form of compensation of 500 euros, which rises to 75 or 150 euros in the event of hospitalization. The other formula, “Budget Protect”, is more expensive (5.90 or 8.90 euros per month), but in exchange offers higher compensation, ranging from 300 to 500 euros per month in the event of incapacity or of job loss (over nine months). As for cases of severe disability or loss of autonomy, they are compensated up to 1000 euros. Compensation which amounts to 300 or 500 euros in the event of hospitalization.
Also read “The fall is unprecedented since the 1980s”: faced with inflation, the French’s drastic cuts in their food budget
This guarantee is aimed at everyone (students, private or public sector workers, self-employed workers, retirees), provided they are a Carrefour customer and are between 18 and 80 years old. Membership “is immediate and takes place without medical formalities,” indicates Carrefour, which specifies that this insurance can already be taken out in Carrefour Bank and Insurance agencies. An “inflation booster” is also integrated into the contracts, which allows the amount of purchase vouchers and compensation to be revised upwards – within the limit of 10% – if inflation ever increases between the year of the subscription and the year of the occurrence of the hard blow.
This new system, which has the advantage for Carrefour of building customer loyalty, is far from unanimously supported. “So now, to be able to eat when you’re in trouble, you’re going to have to take out insurance. I think we need to measure what we’re talking about. (…) It says a lot about the conception that some people have of solidarity in this country,” Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors, denounced this week on RMC. “Paying insurance every month at Carrefour… to eat! They weren’t already putting enough in their pockets with inflation!”, also criticized on X (ex-Twitter) the LFI deputy for the Somme François Ruffin.