French banks claim Banque Postale unfair
The creation of a state-owned postal bank in France moved a step closer yesterday despite a hostile reception from the country’s bigg-est listed banks, which filed a complaint to the European Commission claiming unfair competition.
La Banque Postale, a subsidiary of the national post office, is due to be created on January 1, after winning approval from the French regulator on Wednesday night. With 28m clients, Euros 4.3bn (Dollars 5bn) of revenues, and 17,000 retail outlets, it will increase fierce competition in French banking.
Within minutes of the regulator giving its green light, four of France’s biggest banks, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, Banque Populaire and Credit Agricole, lodged an appeal to the Brussels competition authority, asking it to block the postal bank’s creation.
The Commission said yesterday it would announce before Christmas whether it would approve the creation of La Banque Postale or open an inquiry.
Despite enjoying a recent run of record results, BNP, SocGen, Credit Agricole and Banque Populaire claim the postal bank will be an unfair competitor in an already over-banked market.
They argue it will benefit from unfair support from its state-owned parent La Poste, particularly in the transfer of a Euros 70bn pension deficit for its mostly public-sector workers to the state and its duopoly on the distribution of the highly popular Livret A savings product, held by 21.6m of its customers.
Ariane Obolensky, head of the French banking federation, said there were “serious concerns” over the competition implications of the postal bank, as it would be “almost impossible” to judge how much it had benefited from using La Poste’s branch network, staff, and brand.
La Banque Postale, which already offers sight deposit accounts, savings products and insurance, has been granted a limited licence, allowing it to start selling mortgages to customers who do not already have property savings accounts.
It still cannot sell some products, such as consumer credit, but is expected to seek permission to sell these soon.
