Bruno Le Maire leaves the Elysée on July 20, 2022 (AFP / Ludovic MARIN)
Pressed by the government to make a gesture in favor of the purchasing power of the French, the banks are dragging their feet and are currently focusing their attention on the most fragile, at a limited cost.
Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, which brings together 14 of the 18 federations of the mutualist group, fired on the first last Wednesday by announcing “an account at 1 euro net per month without any incident costs”, for customers “in financial difficulty”.
Societe Generale, for its part, followed the movement by announcing also lowering its fragile clientele offer from 3 euros, the legal maximum, to one euro.
The bank with the red and black logo also announced the implementation of student loans at cost price, that is to say without margin for the bank, at the start of the school year, as well as an “overall price stability” for the next year, taking responsibility for inflation, which reached 5.8% year on year in June.
This offer can be seen as a response to the request made at the end of May by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire.
“We have integrated this request from Bercy to pay attention to purchasing power in our reflections”, recognizes Marie-Christine Ducholet, director of retail banking in France for the group. However, she added, there is no common position among banks on the matter, as was the case after the yellow vests crisis, when institutions made commitments to the government to freeze their tariffs for 2019 and to cap incident costs for the most vulnerable customers.
Contacted by AFP, the Ministry of the Economy judged that these latest announcements were going “in the right direction”, while reserving the right to make “a point at the start of the school year”.
The other banking groups for their part recalled the initiatives already launched in recent months: free direct debit rejections in the event that it is the second from the same operator within a few days of each other for La Banque Postale or offers rental car with purchase option over 10 years for low-income households at BNP Paribas.
– A few million a year –
In detail, if the supply of an unlimited number of bank checks and the possibility of an overdraft (after study of the file) proposed by Crédit Mutuel is rather better priced than the rest of the market, where the offer reserved for the fragile clientele remains limited, the price of one euro is far from unprecedented.
“We had already identified establishments that went beyond what the law provides”, confirms to AFP Sandrine Perrois, lawyer for CLCV, an association for the defense of consumers.
Some Crédit Agricole funds, for example, already applied free incident costs, while other regional funds offer current accounts at one euro… but for all customers.
Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale’s offer will apply to 50,000 vulnerable customers, and that of Société Générale to 55,000 customers, out of a total of 13 million and 7.3 million customers respectively.
Announced cost of the operation: “3 to 4 million euros per year”, taking into account the shortfall in free incident costs, according to Daniel Baal, managing director of Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale.
For Societe Generale, the bill should be around 1.3 million euros per year.
“It’s not very expensive after all”, comments Eric Dor, director of economic studies at the IESEG business school, who notes that European banks will still earn several billion euros by the end of 2024 on loans. granted by the European Central Bank (ECB).
– Invest by making a move –
And the border between the commercial gesture and the investment is sometimes narrow.
Regarding loans at cost price for students, “we do it with loans which are very interesting, but indeed, one day, we hope that some of them will stay with us, and we wish them success in their studies and earn money”, concedes Marie-Christine Ducholet.
There remains the “tariff moderation” in place since the yellow vests crisis, and which should continue, according to Crédit Mutuel.
A shortfall in times of inflation which cannot be made up for in the following years, underlines the bank.
© 2022 AFP
Did you like this article ? Share it with your friends with the buttons below.
