The annual interest rate of the Livret A has been at 3% since February 1, 2023. That of the popular savings booklet (LEP), for its part, has been at 4% since August 1, 2024. While French savers were waiting impatiently what order will be the drop expected for February 1, 2025, our colleagues from MoneyVox announce to us a « grosse surprise ». What will ultimately be the new rate for each of these two savings accounts?
Livret A and Livret d'Epargne Populaire (LEP): savers are finally settled!
The Popular savings booklet (LEP) is an ideal savings solution for people on modest incomes with a reference tax income below certain ceilings. It allows you to have a sum of money available to use as precautionary savings. Its rate is higher than the Livret A, at 4% from August 1, 2024 to January 31, 2025.
Eric Lombard, the new Minister of the Economy and Finance announced this Wednesday, January 15, a reduction in these 2 rates from February 1, 2025. Not without specifying that he followed the recommendations of the governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau.
Indeed, each semester, the Banque de France is responsible for calculating, and then proposing to the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, the remuneration rates of regulated savings accounts such as the Livret A or the LEP. These rates are established using regulatory calculation formulas. However, it is possible to deviate from this in exceptional circumstances.
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Thus, from February 1, 2025:
– The annual interest rate of Livret A will be at 2.4%. Against 3% between February 1, 2023 and January 31, 2025.
– The annual interest rate of the Popular Savings Booklet (LEP) will be at 3.5%. Compared to 4% between August 1, 2024 and January 31, 2025.
A helping hand from the State for holders of a Popular Savings Book
According to the decree of January 27, 2021, the LEP rate should therefore have gone from 4% to 2.9%. (2.4% + 0.5%). A rule from which the governor of the Bank of France chose to deviate. And this, therefore, proposing a rate of 3.5%. This is a boost that the State has, once again, been keen to grant to low-income households.
-“With a half-yearly average of the CPI excluding tobacco year-on-year at 1.38%. And an average €STR rate of 3.41% from July to December 2024. The Livret A rate resulting from the formula is 2.4%« can we, in fact, read in the press release from the Banque de France of January 15, 2025.
As for the new rate of Livret A, the preferred savings of the French, it “will amplify the very positive movement of relaunching financing of social housing and local authorities observed for more than a year », announced the Banque de France in a press release.
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This rate of 2.4% is, in turn, in accordance with the formula for calculating the Livret A rate. This takes into account the half-yearly average of inflation excluding tobacco between July and December 2024, and the evolution of the €STR interbank rate over the same period.
The rate that the Banque de France proposed “is down compared to the current rate set at 3% from August 2023 to January 2025 by the decree of July 28, 2023. But still significantly above the level of inflation, which stood at 1, 3% at the end of December. We are now out of exceptional circumstances. And winning our fight against inflation »underlines the Bank of France, in its press release.
Source : MoneyVox
