Equity savings plans (PEA)

Investments in securities managed as part of a PEA (equity savings plan) totalled €101 billion in 2022, following the total of €111.9 billion recorded in 2021, representing a year-on-year decline of 9.7%, comparable to the fall in the CAC40 index in 2022. This decline only wipes out part of the gains of previous years (17.6% growth in securities under management since 2016). Conversely, amounts invested in PEA cash accounts remained stable year on year at around €18.5 billion. Amounts invested in PEA-PMEs (equity savings plans for SMEs) were stable year on year at €2.4 billion at the end of 2022 (i.e. just 2% of total amounts invested in PEAs).

Overall, movements into and out of PEAs in 2022 were for a negative amount (i.e. net outflows of €0.6 billion in 2022), whereas there were net inflows in 2021 (+ €0.5 billion) and in 2020 (+ €1.6 billion). There were net inflows to PEA-PMEs in 2022. Gross deposits fell slightly for both PEAs (from €5.9 billion to €5.3 billion) and for PEA-PMEs (from €0.4 million to €0.3 million). Conversely, cash withdrawals from PEAs rose sharply, especially (proportionately) from PEA-PMEs, with an increase of 53% to €233 million, reflecting the maturity of the plans, some of which exceeded 8 years for the first time since this type of savings plan was introduced on 1 January 2014.

The total number of active PEAs at 31 December 2022 declined year on year (6.4 million, compared with 6.6 million in 2021), while the number of PEA-PMEs continued to grow (a net increase of 10,000 plans, based on the number of new plans minus those closed during the year). It should be noted that, as in 2021, the number of accounts closed represented only a small proportion of the total number of plans, with around 265,000 PEAs and 10,500 PEA-PMEs closed during 2022, i.e. around 4% of the total number of plans. A third of these account closures in the case of PEAs, and half in the case of PEA-PMEs, concerned plans that were less than 5 years old.

In view of the afore-mentioned trends in total outstandings and number of plans at 31 December 2022, average amounts invested in PEAs and in PEA-PMEs fell to €15,612 and €9,618, respectively. In the case of PEA-PMEs, the number of plans increased (+10,000), while outstandings remained stable year on year.

Equities (both listed and unlisted) continued to account for the bulk of securities investments this year for both PEAs and PEA-PMEs (71% and 72%, respectively, of total outstandings at the end of 2022). As was already the case between 2020 and 2021, the proportion of unlisted equities in PEA-PMEs rose sharply in 2022, from 28.4% to 43.9% of total outstanding amounts, at the expense of investment funds, whose proportion declined from 31.9% in 2021 to 25.2% in 2022.