The FSMA has published its 2025 Annual Report. Below, we highlight a number of key developments.
A sector in transition, with brokers maintaining a strong position
At the end of 2025, Belgium counted 8,362 insurance intermediaries, including 4,637 insurance brokers. Although this represents a decrease compared with 2024 (4,898) and 2023 (5,184), brokers remain by far the largest category within insurance distribution. The number of reinsurance intermediaries, on the other hand, increased from 34 to 40, including 32 reinsurance brokers.
While the number of brokers is declining, firms themselves continue to grow and employ more people who are in direct contact with the public. This evolution supports further professionalisation of the sector, as well as greater specialisation and diversification of services. It illustrates the sector’s ability to adapt to an increasingly complex economic and regulatory environment.
Value for money: a structural supervisory priority
Value for money continues to become more deeply embedded in Belgian and European supervision. In 2025, the FSMA completed 185 reviews of insurance products: 165 investment options linked to Branch 23 products and 20 non-life insurance products. For more than half of the products reviewed, costs were adjusted, while 45 products were withdrawn from the market.
Value for money has thus become a structural component of product supervision and is closely linked to developments under the Retail Investment Strategy (RIS) and the gradual implementation of these principles within insurance distribution.
In the same context, the FSMA confirms the update of its POG (Product Oversight and Governance) handbook. This revision further develops the existing product governance framework and more clearly defines expectations towards distributors and their cooperation with product manufacturers.
European harmonisation and proportionality
The annual report also places particular emphasis on administrative simplification, proportionality and a more harmonised European regulatory framework. It highlights the importance of avoiding unnecessary administrative burdens as well as national divergences in the implementation of European rules that may increase complexity or market fragmentation. At the same time, it remains essential to preserve workable regulation that takes account of the specific characteristics of national markets and the various distribution models.
These are issues to which Becobra has particular attention in monitoring European and national regulatory developments and on which the association regularly informs its members.
The full annual report is available below, in French and Dutch.
