We have the standard Livrets, but need to open another account to put the money from sale of previous house. Not long terms savings as we will be living/renovating using this, but preferably more than 0.5% a year interest.
The one that pops up on a search is B For Bank. Which I’ve never heard of and the name is hugely off-putting!
Has any one heard of/used it or has other suggestions?
It’s part of Credit Agricole - or is entirely owned by CA to be accurate. Was their wealth management arm - except it flopped - so they became an online bank - and that’s not going much better.
CA has another savings account (think its LDDS) but no idea what the interest is, but not tax free
That sites pretty good for an overview of most French money things
There’s also Livret : les meilleurs livrets d'épargne en mai 2026
They’ve been around for a while (over 10 years, possibly), but no idea whether they’re any good.
Compte à terme ? Not sure whether these are still available to “particuliers”, and obvs you’d need to shop around for the best trade off between return and bank charges. They’re useful if you know roughly when you’re going to need the money, so you can leave it in for 1 month rolling, 3 months, or 6 months, etc. The shorter you leave it, the lower the interest rate. Performance with the mainstream banks isn’t generally brilliant though.
We use the CIC when we need a compte à terme. But it’s best to make an appointment and go to speak to them in person. I think they publish details online of the Compte Evolutif. But when we spoke to the conseiller, he was able to tell us about other term accounts with different interest rates depending on how long you want to tie the money up for. These aren’t published online so it’s definitely worth inquiring.
I’m sure there are better rates out there with the neobanks but I can’t be bothered shifting the money every few months.
CA have told me they are completely exiting the business of offering time deposits ie for 6/12/18 months, that automatically roll-over for a fresh cycle on maturity. One creative suggestion made to me is to take out a 5 year deposit (definitely available on an ongoing basis) and accept the 50% penalty on interest on any capital withdrawn in a particular year (31 days notice required). The argument made is that the end result is still better than the 0.5% currently received on their standard short term/instant access accounts.
The time deposit options available seem rather limited if you don’t want to deposit funds outside France, and don’t want to have to open a account with a new bank, with all the usual AML/ID hassles…
Interesting, thanks. Have emailed our CA advisor to check rates and penalties on this. However in terms of sticking with the limits for protected money it could make sense to move at least some out of CA - the money is currently in their Normandy Performance Fund, but the boosted rate runs out next week.
Trading 212 3% on QMMF’s immediate withdwawl
Hi,
Hello Bank (online bank of Société Générale) currently has a livret at 2% (gross, taxable) for 12 months (drops to 0.5% after that but you can just open another one with them at the end of that period). I’ve been with them for several years and no complaints. You can get them on the phone easily too. Someone else has mentioned the LDDS - this is currently at 1.5% (net tax-free) the same as the Livret A but you can only put 12,000-ish in, if i’m not mistaken.
Hope this helps.
I can never get over the constant cry for ‘returns’ coupled with ‘but not them’
We have already bashed around T212’s offer of 3% in another thread -
which again is kindly posted by Noelable.
So, if you don’t want that, why not German Bund’s -
“Germany’s 10-year bund yield fell to 3.05% as signs of progress in Iran peace talks eased government borrowing costs from multi-year highs. The yield had reached a 15-year peak of 3.2% on Tuesday amid expectations of interest rate hikes following the Iran conflict’s disruption of energy markets.” (Tradingeconomics)
What to do? - take your 0.5% ? Even my Livret Bleu ,at 1.4% after tax is less than my UK T212 2.2% before tax.
Or try
where I have 6K ish at the moment in a pension. But do try, try, try to get access to UK deposit accounts - where I’m getting 7% max on regular savers, and almost everything on + 5% - though have to put up with the Impot’s 3916 !
Though mind exchange rate risk - GBP/EUR 5% down from last year… is it a god time to go GBP now ?
Hello Bank is online bank of BNP Paribas. The online bank of Société Générale is Boursobank.
Their Livret Bourso+ has a interest rate of 1.5% (taxable).
We absolutely don’t want to move money back into GDP! We can loose more money in currency exchange than with miserable interest rates!
We are more looking for easy access and safe as will be living of this money/using it for renovation bills. So imagine will all be gone in 2 years!
Ah, of course, you want to keep the EUR, wasn’t thinking. As much of my savings is GBP, I tend to think the other way.
Yes, exchange rate risk is important, get an extra 2% interest in UK, versus the pound goes down 2% in that year.
It was 1.20 early last year (March / April), now 1.15, so about -4.3% Or another way, euros now buy 4.3% more GBP.
Edit - are you very against T212’s QMMF’s at 3% ?
There’s always a reason a currency might have to pay more to entice investment in it.
Markets are just crowdfunders so if that’s what the market thinks is a correct value, most of the time it’s right. At least in large sophisticated Western markets about Western currencies and other holdings (eg shares).
The only way to beat that is IME if there is some unexpected event or change, or if you have inside information ie you know better than the market.
Yes of course, apologies, Hello Bank = BNP - thanks for correcting me!