Finances: the Livret A savings account experienced its worst April since 2009

The drop in interest rates has changed habits. The Livret A savings account, still penalized by the drop in its interest rate in February, was shunned by savers last month and recorded its worst April since 2009, according to data published Thursday, May 22, by the Caisse des Dépôts (CDC).

The French preferred to dip into their Livret A savings accounts rather than topping them up, and the total amount of withdrawals from the most popular savings product exceeded that of deposits by 200 million euros in April.

This "net outflow" is unprecedented in its amount since 2009 – the year the Livret A savings account was made available to all banks – and only April 2015 had seen the Livret A account end up in the red, at -100 million euros. Conversely, the Sustainable and Solidarity Development Savings Accounts (LDDS) increased slightly last month, with a net inflow of 310 million euros.

Livret A savings accounts and LDDS, two related products whose only difference is the ceiling, allow you to keep your savings available, but they are suffering from the reduction in their interest rate from 3% to 2.4%, announced in mid-January and effective February 1. They are suffering in particular from competition from life insurance, which had garnered record contributions in March.

An illustration of the French disaffection for these two savings products: over the first four months of the year, the cumulative amounts collected by banks for these two savings accounts amounted to 3.6 billion euros, compared to 11.3 billion euros over the period January-April 2024.

Despite this slowdown in collection, the outstanding amounts for these two booklets are still hovering around their historical highs : 444 billion euros for the Livret A, 162.7 billion euros for the LDDS, or 606.7 billion euros in total, a record.

Furthermore, the Livret d'épargne populaire (LEP), reserved for low-income households, also experienced its worst April since 2009, with a significant drop in funds of 1.96 billion euros.

April is often a poor month for this booklet, due to the annual closure of accounts by banks for holders who no longer meet the resource conditions, but the scale of the withdrawal suggests that here too, withdrawals were higher than deposits.

By comparison, in April 2024, outflows were only €270 million. Total outstanding LEP funds stood at €80.8 billion last month.