Some think that it is a bank reserved for municipal agents, others that this establishment finances municipal infrastructures. Fake. The municipal credit formerly called “the mount of pity” or “the nail”, is a banking service which delivers cash against the deposit of a good. That of Nantes was created two centuries ago!
She is sitting in the waiting room. Tight on her knees, her purse. Inside, the family jewels. In particular a brooch from which she hopes to get a great price.
It’s the second time she’s been here. This lady, retired, who won’t even want to give us her first name for fear that we will recognize her, does not hide, however, her financial difficulties. “With my husband, also retired, we can save on everything, we can’t do it anymore…”
Her desire for discretion is because her son, soon to be in his thirties, whom she is taking in, does not know that she is coming “to the nail” to collect money.
She is ashamed. Shame for not being able to make ends meet. Ashamed to have to separate, for a time, from the few goods inherited from his family. And at the same time, what other solution is available to her?
Myriam, she is done with this shame that tormented her at the beginning. She has been frequenting municipal credit since her twenties. She may work, earn 1500 euros per month, she comes back several times a year. Especially when filing taxes.
Today is her birthday. Myriam needs money to organize a little party, buy a cake…have fun.
What she appreciates here, “it’s the welcome, the human side of people” who will appraise his bracelet and his rings, then give him the money corresponding to the value of the objects. She was hoping for 250 euros, she will get 280 thanks to a gold price that has never been so high for decades. A sum that it undertakes to repay within six months at the minimal interest rate of 1%.
This is municipal credit. A financial remedy for the most fragile…but not only. “For some, we are a bank. They use us as such, to withdraw money, sometimes to supplement a bank loan within the framework of a project “ explains Jean-François Pillet, the director of the municipal credit of Nantes and its agencies (located in Rennes, Tours and Angers). “Once, a business manager came to deposit gold bars, there were 160,000 euros. There, typically, it was to finance an economic project, an investment… but this type of deposit is anecdotal and remains extremely rare”.
In fact, of the 10,000 loans in progress identified by the municipal credit of Nantes, the average pledge is 900 euros and 90% is against a deposit of jewelry. “It’s kind of a public service” he continues.
A public banking service endowed with ethics.
Reimbursement rates are particularly low here. As Christophe Bonneau, head of the pawnbroking department, points out, “we are not here to judge people, and the goal is not to make money but to help them out and if our customers have difficulty repaying, we also offer them to extend their repayment period”.
At the time of the pandemic, confinement requires, municipal credit saw pawnbroking applications drop by 7%. Normal, people, have greatly reduced their consumption. But since the summer of 2021, requests have been pouring in again.
Is inflation to blame? “It is still too early to tell. but it is not impossible that this will take the turn of what happened after the subprime crisis in 2008 when there was a very strong increase throughout France” deciphers Jean-François Pilet.
“Through the pawnbroker, we see the difficulties of our fellow citizens… and at the moment, it is clear that our services are working rather well. There is a trend towards an increase in the number of loans. It is a sign. We also see it in the other area that we manage: micro-credit. We are forced to ‘accept fewer applications due to the deterioration of individual situations’.
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Jewellery, paintings, candlesticks, fine wines, small pieces of furniture…are stored in a safe until the owners come to collect them.
Nine out of ten customers will come to pick up their items. “People care about them, they often have sentimental value” says Christophe Bonneau.
For the remaining 10% of objects, municipal credit organizes auctions once a month on average. In order to recover its costs.
►Mont-de-piété, my aunt, the nail, the other names of municipal credit.
- The pawnshop, monte di pietà, appeared in the 15th century in Italy, it was a charitable establishment, managed by the church. At that time to receive remuneration for a loan of money was a sin, it was a question of fighting against usury. In France, the first pawnshop was created in Avignon in 1614.
- In Nantes, birth of municipal credit in 1813. There are 18 municipal credits in France and about fifty agencies.
- At my aunt’s: in the 19th century, this is the place where François Ferdinand d’Orléans, (Prince of Joinville) claimed to have forgotten his watch. The story says that to honor a gambling debt, this inveterate gambler would have gone to deposit his watch at the Mont-de-Piété. And to justify her absence, he would have declared having forgotten her at her aunt’s.
- The expression “to put in the nail” has a purely literal origin: the objects left at the pawnbroker were simply fixed to the wall using a nail, in order to put them out of reach of the person who had asked for the loan.
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