It was in July 1961 in Rouen that Matmut was created, receiving its approval authorizing it to carry out insurance operations. We are a few months after car insurance was made compulsory for the French.
Mutuals already existed then for different categories of the population but not for private sector employees. And so, the idea of Paul Bennetot, its founder, is to offer access to low-cost car insurance for these French people.
Very quickly, the insurer will diversify its offer. It is customary to say that the first Matmut housing contract was drafted during the events of May 68. It is thus customary to say that at the time, certain employees demonstrated in the morning and worked on the contract in the afternoon. .
The founder of Matmut, Paul Bennetot, is an atypical and brilliant character. Teacher, son of peasants, he is not only the founder of Matmut but also at the origin of the third-party payment system. He is the creator in Normandy of the first mutual pharmacy with this concept of third-party payment: he actually considered that people who were insured with a mutual insurance company did not have to pay twice for the medicine in a way, even if they were reimbursed.
So once members had paid their dues, they had the right not to pay for their medication. When they went to the pharmacy, they were automatically taken care of.
Don’t talk to Nicolas Gomart about (Very) black book of mutuals by journalist Daniel Rosenweg, which appeared last fall, because he gets annoyed very quickly. This book, which is not kind to mutuals as a whole, asserts that they are no more virtuous than private insurance companies.
He notably accuses the mutuals of having made nearly 3 billion in savings with the pandemic crisis, and of continuing to increase their prices. I can answer for Matmut says Nicolas Gomart:
“Due to the drop in the number of claims, linked to confinement, we have frozen our car rates in 2021, we have granted a donation of 75 euros to all our members who were looking for work. This year, in terms of health we have decided to freeze the rates, so all this represents almost a year of results for the structure.”