New indicator of the financial difficulties of households, Crédit Municipal de Nantes, which also manages the Rennes establishment, recorded an additional 11% transactions in 2022. The organization is the only one that offers pawnshops. The principle is to leave an object of value there, gold jewelry most often in exchange for money, on average 8 to 900 euros last year.
It can be the way to meet a hard cost without going through the bank. An identity document is enough, and if possible the purchase invoice for the object. Jean-François Pilet is CEO of Crédit Municipal de Nantes:
“Anyone can come and we come when we actually need money. So it tends to be aimed at people in financial difficulty. It’s a short time, a mortgage lasts 10 months on average, so we’re really there for a one time labor costs, people repay the loan 90% of the time, the main items handed in to us are jewellery, but basically any type of item can be accepted at our counters, so we have good vintages, luxury bags, silverware, computers. ..”
A worrying increase in loans
Of its 5 branches, the Nantes organization provided almost 11,000 loans in 2022 compared to 9,000 in 2021. And this increase in activity is not necessarily a good signal.
“Activity had dropped a lot during the Covid crisis and by 2021 we had returned to our pre-2020 level. And in 2022 we have an 11% increase on all the amounts we lent, so that is very significant. Last once we saw that it was 2008-2011 with the previous financial crisis, so we can be a kind of barometer for a difficult social context. It’s not just that in Nantes, we are in waters similar to the French progression.”
A worrying year 2023
Credit is open to everyone and it is a way to get money quickly. The sign of financial hardship for so many households. Most often it is women and in particular single mothers who come to borrow…
“Overall, we can come and finish the end of the month, a car sale, we have had examples of taxes… There are very different reasons, in general it means that the people of Nantes suffer more, need more financial assistance over a short period than it has had in previous years. So, overall, a worsening financial health. We know that inflation is a factor in exacerbating poverty, we know that the inflation context will be constant in 2023, so we should have similar activity in 2023.”
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