Crdit Agricole, La Banque Postale… These banks that will facilitate the opening of LEP 6.20%

Since March 2021, banks have been able to simplify access to the People’s Savings Account by automating the eligibility check. Few have taken the plunge.

It is almost certain: the Livret d’epargne populaire will reach, on 1 February 2023, a net yield of 6.20%, thanks to the updated announcement of regulated savings rates. 6.20%, which is the average inflation in the second half of 2022, which the LEP is designed to align with.

With this new increase, the 3rd in a year, the payroll, which already shows a return of 4.6%, is still going gain in attractiveness. However, unlike the Livret A and its 55 million accounts, the LEP is still far from having filled up the savers: only 6.9 million accounts were opened at the end of 2021, while the number of eligible households reached 18.6 million. Clearly, nearly 2 out of 3 happy readers still snubbed the LEP, yet the only booklet that today makes it possible to neutralize the effects of rising prices.

LEP: are you entitled to this great booklet without knowing it?

Reluctant banks

The reasons for this delay are known. LEP is not universal, but reserved for moderate income households. To ensure their eligibility, banks must therefore check, at the opening and then each year, the reference tax income entered on their tax notice. An administrative complication that has long deterred advisors from directing their clients to this product.

This brake, however, is now high, at least in theory. Since March 2021, distributing banks can check the eligibility of their customers, no longer manually, but automatically, by directly questioning the tax authorities by computer. This also paves the way for remote account opening, on the web and mobile.

It is still necessary that the banks set up this device. Unfortunately, almost 2 years after its availability, it is still far from being the case. Here, summarized in a table, the state of play in the main retail banking brands as of December 20, 2022, based on responses to our requests or information on their website.

As one can see, only three banks have opted for automatic control: Crédit Agricole, La Banque Postale and Société Générale. The others remain in the manual control, which require to present, at the opening, the tax notices of the last two years, then to transmit each new notice, every year before March 31st.