When they refuse to open a bank account, the banks must provide the applicant with a certificate of refusal, which then allows him to initiate the account right procedure. In a third of cases, they don’t do it or do it badly. The regulations will be adapted.
Article L312-1 of the Monetary and Financial Code, which governs the procedure for the right to an account, is nevertheless clear on the subject: The credit institution which has refused to open an account provides the applicant with systematically, free of charge and without delay (…) a certificate of refusal to open an account and informs him that he can ask the Banque de France to appoint a credit institution to open an account for him.
In practice, however, these two obligations do not always seem to be respected. Far from it. The Court of Auditors, in its 2021 public report, pointed to the problem, relying on the checks carried out by the ACPR (1)the sector regulator: (…) less than half of the applicants questioned stated that they had learned of the procedure through the intermediary of the bank which refused them the opening of an account and almost a third said they had difficulty obtaining the account refusal letternecessary for the initiation of the procedure, whereas these two obligations are enshrined in law.
These shortcomings have a impact on the effectiveness of the right to an account in France. The annual number of appointments by the Banque de France has been in free fall for 5 years, falling from 52,911 in 2016 to 23,660 in 2020. Still according to the Court of Auditors, 34% of appointments made by the Banque de France in 2019 did not gives rise to the opening of an account.
The lack of response will be worth refusal
Rather than forcing banks to comply with regulations, Bercy has chosen a softer path: adapt the procedure for the right to an account to limit the nuisance related to their breaches.
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After in-depth consultation (…) with representatives of the banking profession (…), writes Bruno Le Maire in a letter dated December 22, 2021, the Minister of the Economy will publish, mid-March according to AGEFI, a decree in Council of State on the subject. This one goes remove the obligation for banks to produce a certificate of refusal. It will be considered that the absence of a response from the bank within 15 days (…) is equivalent to a refusal and will give applicants the possibility of seizing the Banque de France on this basis in order to initiate a procedure for the right to an account, writes Bruno Le Maire in the same letter of December 22, 2021 and addressed to Amlia Lakrafi. The latter, LREM deputy for French people living abroad, had alerted him to the subject, highlighting in particular the difficulty for French people residing abroad to exercise their right to an account.
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(1) Prudential supervision and resolution authority