La Banque postale (, ) is a French postal bank, created on 1 January 2006 as a subsidiary of La Poste, the national postal service. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of

European Banking Supervision European Banking Supervision, also known as the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), is the policy framework for the prudential supervision of banks in the euro area. It is centered on the European Central Bank (ECB), whose supervisory arm is re ...

in late 2014, and as a consequence is directly supervised by the

European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's Big Four (banking)#International ...

Overview

The bank provides service to over 10.8 million active private customers, as well as more than 400,000 customers businesses, professionals, social economy actors and local

public sector The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, pu ...

bodies. The company is considered to be one of the leading lenders to local authorities, maintaining an expansive branch network in France consisting of over 17,000 contact points and 7,700 post offices. It is the only bank in France charged with the responsibility to implement banking services to the public under a legislative initiative to modernize the French economy in 2008. La Banque postale reports a

net income In business and Accountancy, accounting, net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and Amortization (a ...

of €5.602 billion, -2.5% relative to 2015.

History

In 1882 the French state established the

Caisse Nationale d'Épargne La Banque postale (, ) is a French postal bank, created on 1 January 2006 as a subsidiary of La Poste, the national postal service. It has been designated as a Significant Institution since the entry into force of European Banking Supervision ...

(CNE) to manage retail savings collected through the French network of post offices. The CNE thus competed for the collection of small retail savings with the local Caisses d'Épargne (also known in that context as ) which were private-sector entities. In 2012, the company set out to be a benchmark partner for the public sector, focusing on working with all regional stakeholders. By 2015, La Banque postale's commitments had been realized, now being recognized as the reference bank for local authorities concerning financing and banking services, as well for stakeholders dealing with social housing, local institutions, public health-care establishments and semi-public corporations.

Controversy

In 2010 the French government's

Autorité de la concurrence The ; ) is France's national competition regulator. Its predecessor, the Competition Council, was established in the 1950s. The Competition Authority is an , responsible for preventing anti-competitive practices and monitoring the functioning ...

(the department in charge of regulating competition) fined eleven banks, including La Banque postale, the sum of €384.9 million for colluding to charge unjustified fees on check processing, especially for extra fees charged during the transition from paper check transfer to "Exchanges Check-Image" electronic transfer.

Climate policy

In October 2021, the bank announced that it would no longer provide financial services to

oil and gas A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geologi ...

companies, invest in companies active in the sector and finance any related projects. It additionally presented a plan to completely exit the oil and gas industries by 2030, becoming the first bank to make such a pledge. The policy has been described as an "historic precedent" in the banking sector by

environmental organisations An environmental organization is an organization coming out of the conservation or environmental movements that seeks to protect, analyse or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation from human forces. In this sense the environme ...

such as Reclaim Finance, Friends of the Earth France and Oxfam France.

References

External links

* Banks based in Paris Banks established in 1998 Banks under direct supervision of the European Central Bank French brands Postal savings system Government-owned banks of France {{France-bank-stub