The end of the pandemic period seems to result in a harsh return to reality for several tens of thousands of French households. A few days ago, the Banque de France published its monthly financial inclusion barometer for the month of August 2022.
Particularly noteworthy among the lessons of this new report are the data related to incident files, whether it is the national file of incidents of amortization of loans to individuals (FICP) or the central check file (FCC).
20% increase compared to 2021 for the FICP
The FICP identifies people who have had difficulty paying back a loan or who are in a situation of over-indebtedness. Its monthly number has continued to decline since May, during which it exceptionally returned to a level slightly higher than that of May 2019, that is, before the coronavirus pandemic.
However, this slight inflection in the curve of individuals registered in the FICP each month is not enough to hide the drastic increase in their number compared to 2021. More than 66,000 appeared there in July 2022, that is, 10,000 more than in July 2021, which represents an increase of 19%. Just as important is the change in the total number in the January-July period, as the FICP far exceeds 400,000 registered people (457,525 at the end of last month), which was not the case a year ago.
The central check file remains far from its pre-Covid level
Entries in the central check file are seeing minor but still very real growth, fueled in particular by bank card withdrawals which are up 28% between the last two observed July months. More than 4,000 additional people were added to the FCC in July 2022 compared to the same period last year.
With a strong increase from April to June, the flow of monthly FCC registrations stabilized around 75,000 in July, which corresponds to its highest level for fiscal year 2021. On the other hand, this figure remains far from pre-Covid standards, the monthly flow whose average was around 100,000 registered each month for the year 2019. As for the number accumulated during the first six months of the year 2022, it is instead much higher than the same period last year with about 470,000 people registered. with the FCC, that is, more than 50,000 more registrations than in 2021.
Source: BFM TV
