MAIF

MAIF

Founded in 1934 and headquartered in Niort, MAIF operates as a mutual insurance company owned by its members — a structural choice that removes shareholder pressure and allows the firm to take a patient, multi-decade view on both underwriting and investment activity. The firm's CEO, Pascal Demurger, has publicly positioned MAIF as a mission-driven enterprise, embedding social purpose into the mutual's charter. Its membership base exceeds 4 million, making it one of France's largest property and casualty insurers. MAIF deploys capital across a diversified portfolio anchored in fixed-income and real estate assets to back its insurance liabilities, but its defining investment activity flows through Ternel — formerly MAIF Avenir — a venture capital vehicle that targets early-stage and growth-equity rounds in French and European technology companies. The strategy emphasizes FinTech, InsurTech, enterprise software, and AI/ML, with direct investments sourced alongside Bpifrance, the French public investment bank, and private equity firm Capital Croissance, which merged its own venture activities with MAIF Avenir in 2024 to form the Ternel platform. Confirmed portfolio holdings span mobility platforms and digital health startups, reflecting a thesis that aligns member interests with emerging infrastructure. MAIF's investment organization operates from Niort and Paris, with the group's financial management falling under its AFG (Association Française de la Gestion financière) membership. The firm is a founding shareholder of IMA Group (Inter Mutuelles Assistance), an assistance and services group headquartered in France, and maintains a long-term strategic partnership with MGEN, the French education-sector health insurer, for joint health and life insurance products. Its real asset holdings include commercial properties in Paris and Anglet. In 2024, MAIF Avenir was rebranded as Ternel alongside the integration with Capital Croissance, formalizing a co-investment structure that signals deeper commitment to direct venture. MAIF's genuine structural differentiator is the architecture of its venture platform: a mutual insurer deploying policyholder capital directly into technology startups, without the intermediation of external fund managers, in partnership with a sovereign-aligned development bank. This model allows MAIF to align long-duration insurance liabilities with illiquid venture holdings while operating free from LPA constraints. The Ternel structure effectively functions as a permanent capital vehicle inside an insurance balance sheet — a configuration few peers have replicated at scale.