The growth of the popular savings account is stalling

For the Popular Savings Account (LEP), the signals remained green in 2024: the number of holders increased by 900,000, the amount invested by 6.3 billion euros. But the dynamic of 2022, and especially 2023, is no longer – in total, these two years, the LEP had gained 4 million followers and 34 billion in assets.

This growth was fueled by the rate of remuneration of the savings account (it reached 6.1% for six months in 2023), the increase to 10,000 euros of the ceiling and communication efforts. Faced with these exceptional results, the Banque de France, which actively promotes the LEP, set itself, at the start of 2024, the objective of reaching 12.5 million holders by the middle of the year. Six months after the deadline, the account is not there yet (11.8 million).

The stakes are high, because in France the LEP is, as the name suggests, the basic popular savings tool for building up a precautionary cushion. Its rate is indeed advantageous: it is the only livret which must compensate for inflation and be remunerated at least 0.5 points more than the Livret A, not to mention that the government often grants boosts compared to this calculation formula. From February for example, the LEP rate will be 3.5% (2.4% for Livret A) while the formula should have taken it to 2.90%. As with Livret A, interest is not taxed.

The advantages of the LEP are reserved for adults not attached to the parental tax household and whose income does not exceed certain levels, updated every 1^is January (the operation is this year awaiting a finance law). It is the reference tax income, indicated on the tax notice, that counts. Some 19 million people meet these conditions according to the Banque de France. More than 60% of the eligible population is therefore covered: a sharply increasing figure, for those who see the glass half full (it was 37% at the end of 2021), a missed opportunity for far too many households still, for others .

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