Awards for Excellence 2020
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The coordination of the financial response to the coronavirus crisis has sometimes seemed easier in France than elsewhere in Europe.
That is partly thanks to the way the industry is represented by the French Banking Federation (FBF), whose president is Frédéric Oudéa, chief executive of Societe Generale.
During the pandemic French banks, through the FBF, voluntarily agreed to a six-month repayment holiday on the principal of outstanding loans for businesses and the self-employed.
Oudéa has thrown himself into the FBF’s public affairs work since the Covid-19 outbreak. And his bank has demonstrated an extraordinarily proactive response of its own: rolling out repayment holidays automatically, for example, while clients at other banks still needed to request it.
France’s state-guaranteed loans scheme puts more of an onus on the banks, which, unlike in Germany, Italy and the UK, must still take a 10% portion of the risk, even for smaller borrowers. Nevertheless, SocGen, dealt with 76,000 requests by businesses for a total of about €19 billion of state guaranteed loans this spring.
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Frédéric Oudéa |
Under the guarantee scheme SocGen has handled considerably more loans for French businesses than its €12 billion of new business lending in 2019. It has done so by speeding up the credit process and delegating more decision-making power to frontline staff.
SocGen announced a new €50 million charity programme in early April, a week before its rival BNP Paribas said its package of medical and social donations would reach a similar amount.
SocGen’s efforts have also focused on music patronage, as the crisis has devastated the finances of many French cultural organizations, particularly orchestras.
“We have a formidable opportunity to demonstrate that responsible banking can be much more than a slogan. We can make it a reality,” Oudéa told Euromoney early in the crisis.
SocGen’s actions have also included guaranteeing the salaries of its 140,000 staff around the world during the crisis. It pledged not to use France’s other supports for businesses in order to relieve the burden on the state budget and to honour the salaries of staff unable to work due to illness or child care issues.
