The Housing Savings Plan (PEL) rate is updated once a year, at the start of the year. An increase is looming for January 1, 2024, which justifies waiting until the new year to open a new PEL. Explanations.
With its remuneration of 1.40% net (2% gross), the PEL is clearly not the most popular savings product at the moment. This is evidenced by the evolution of its outstanding assets, which fell by more than 23 billion euros over the first 9 months of 2023.
Star product of the 2010s, the PEL has lost a lot of its attractiveness since its rate fell to 1%, before rebounding to 2% at the start of the year. Since, also, that the executive has chosen to remove your tax exemption.
The Housing Savings Plan, however, retains some advantages in the landscape of regulated savings: total security, a high payment ceiling (61,200 euros) and the prospect of benefiting, in a few years, from a good rate property loan…
Home savings plan: for whom is a 2% PEL still a good deal?
Patience advises
Are you planning to open a PEL? A word of advice if you’re not in too much of a hurry: wait for January 2024! The PEL rate, in fact, is updated, once a year on January 1, according to the evolution of the result of a complex calculation formula, indexed to the rates of the monetary markets (swap rates 2, 5 and 10 years).
However, the result of this formula is currently greater than 2%: 2.186% as of September 1, 2023, last known figure. The rule being to round this result up to the nearest quarter point, the PEL rate could be updated to 2.25% gross (1.575% net). Or even 2.50% if the result of the formula soon exceeds 2.25%, since it is the November mark which will be retained by the Banque de France to define the future rate, no later than December 5 (1).
However, it must be remembered that a PEL does not work like a Livret A or a LEP. His remuneration is called generational: the rate in effect at the time of opening no longer changes throughout the life of the plan. Clearly, a PEL opened today will yield 2% as long as it is not closed. If you wait until January, on the other hand, it will have every chance of bringing in (a little) more.
A risk of disappointment
The increase, however, is not guaranteed. As with the Livret A, the Banque de France can invoke exceptional circumstances to prevent automatic rate updating and propose to the government to set it as it wishes. It is difficult to see why the monetary institution would make this choice next month, but such a scenario is still possible. In a word, patience!
(1) See thejudgment of January 27, 2021 relating to interest rates on regulated savings products