Ecorama · BOURSORAMA

François-Xavier Selleret (Agirc-Arrco) : "On accepte tous de cotiser si on a la garantie d'avoir en retour une retraite"

April 1, 2026·27 min·2 clips

Agirc-Arrco's director tells young people the fund's mission is to guarantee their retirement in 2100 — and has 91 billion euros in reserves to back that promise.

1. Ecorama interviews François-Xavier Selleret, Director-General of Agirc-Arrco, the complementary private-sector pension regime covering 60 million insured people in France. 2. Selleret is the operational head of a fund that covers current retirees, active private-sector employees, and anyone who was ever a private-sector employee in France, including those now self-employed or living abroad. 3. The episode's central question is: why did Agirc-Arrco post a 1.4 billion euro surplus in 2025 while the French general pension regime expects a 6 billion euro deficit? 4. Selleret explains the surplus results from social partners governing on 15-year pluriannual horizons: every revaluation decision is evaluated for its cumulative impact over 15 years before being adopted. 5. The fund currently holds 91 billion euros in reserves, nearly 11 months of total annual pension payments (100 billion euros per year), which Selleret describes as a shock absorber against economic and demographic cycles. 6. During COVID, 9 million employees entered partial unemployment in a single day, collapsing contributions; Agirc-Arrco mobilized reserves and continued paying all pensions without interruption. 7. Selleret distinguishes Agirc-Arrco (a contributory regime where your pension mirrors your career earnings) from the general regime (a solidarity regime that guarantees a minimum for all, partially funded by taxes rather than social contributions). 8. He argues that the general regime's tax financing logically gives the state and parliament a governance role, whereas Agirc-Arrco operates entirely under paritarist management between unions and employer federations — without state involvement. 9. The 91 billion euros in reserves are 90% invested in European equities and bonds, generating a 6% yield in the most recent reported year and returning 1.1 billion euros in investment income. 10. Selleret says France has approximately 6 trillion euros in total savings and questions whether more of it should be directed into long-term retirement savings instruments rather than liquid accounts. 11. There are currently 15 million French people with a pension savings contract (Plan d'Épargne Retraite), and Selleret argues these assets should be consolidated with other retirement projections in a single simulation. 12. The Marel simulator, available on the Agirc-Arrco website, processed 25 million simulations last year and covers all retirement systems simultaneously — general and complementary — allowing users to model the impact of going part-time, switching to self-employment, or retiring early. 13. Selleret illustrates the simulator's usefulness with a direct example: 30,000 euros in a pension savings account translates to approximately 100 euros per month over the duration of retirement, a figure most account holders do not know. 14. On the pension age debate ahead of France's 2027 presidential elections, Selleret notes three levers — contribution rates, retirement age, and pension amounts — and observes that no one wants lower pensions or higher fees, leaving legal age as the remaining adjustment lever. 15. He states that in the 2023 negotiations, social partners agreed to revalue pensions at inflation minus 0.4 percentage points for the 2023–2026 period because guaranteeing full inflation indexation over the next 15 years could not be financed under central demographic assumptions. 16. Selleret acknowledges that younger generations enter the labour market later than previous generations and will therefore naturally exit later, but declines to advocate for a specific legal retirement age, citing his duty of reserve as a non-political administrator. 17. He identifies immigration and productivity as two additional structural levers for pension system sustainability, describing them as sensitive but essential variables in the global demographic equation. 18. The interview format is one-on-one, conducted live on Boursorama and YouTube simultaneously, with the host pressing Selleret on specific numbers and practical recommendations while Selleret consistently defers political positions to social partners. 19. Listeners who want a grounded, numbers-anchored explanation of how France's complementary pension system works and why it outperforms the general regime will find this interview informative. 20. Those who want advocacy positions on pension reform — for or against later retirement ages, capitalization, or specific policy fixes — will find Selleret's duty-of-reserve framing frustrating.

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