The Banque de France welcomed this in the latest annual report of its Banking Inclusion Observatory, published in June: the total outstanding amount of microcredit in France exceeded 2 billion euros for the first time, in 2023, with an increase of 5% compared to 2022 and 52% since 2018.
However, this amount mainly represents professional microcredits, intended to finance the creation, development or takeover of a small business. In contrast, personal microcredit, which allows a public deprived of access to traditional credit circuits to realize a social or professional integration project, remains lagging behind, with barely 125 million euros outstanding. .
Personal microcredits, loans with an amount capped at 8,000 euros over a maximum period of seven years, “we do 20,000 per year, whereas we could do 100,000”summarizes Etienne Depeyre, head of the financial emancipation division within the Crésus federation of associations.
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This discrepancy is partly explained by the evolution of public support for the sector: the management of the social cohesion fund, one of the missions of which is to guarantee microcredits, was transferred in 2020 from the Caisse des Dépôts to Bpifrance, whose policy is more focused on supporting business creation and takeover.
Gap
However, players in the sector also highlight the recent change in the typical profile of potential borrowers. “With inflation, some of the people who had the ability to repay no longer have itexplains Vanessa Ly, director of vulnerable customers at La Banque Postale. We are therefore increasingly targeting precarious workers, involuntary part-time workers, fixed-term contracts, temporary workers, and less and less on people who live on minimum social benefits. » With the consequence of a growing Gap between this target audience and the social organizations usually prescribing microcredit.
Added to these difficulties are cultural obstacles, notes Philippe Assedo, responsible for corporate social responsibility at BNP Paribas Personal Finance. “In French culture, professional microcredit is rewarding. Saying “I create my job through the creation of my business” is positive success. Personal microcredit refers to over-indebtedness: “I have a money problem”. »
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