In Nantes, the number of pawnbrokers has increased and this is not a good sign

New indicator on the financial difficulties of households, Crédit Municipal de Nantes, which also manages the Rennes establishment, recorded 11% additional transactions in 2022. The organization is the only one to offer pawnbrokers. The principle is to leave an object of value there, gold jewelry most often, in exchange for money, on average 8 to 900 euros last year. This can be the way to deal with a blow, without going through the bank. An identity document is enough, and if possible, the purchase invoice of the object.

People repay the loan in 90% of cases

Jean-François Pilet is the Managing Director of Crédit Municipal de Nantes: “Anyone can come, and we come when we actually need money. This tends to be aimed at people in financial difficulty. It’s a short time, a pawn loan lasts 10 months on average, we are really there for a one-off helping hand, people repay the loan in 90% of cases… The main items that people drop off are jewelry, but basically any type of item can be accepted at our counters. We have great vintages, luxury bags, silverware, computers…”

A worrying increase in loans

Of its five branches, the Nantes organization granted nearly 11,000 loans in 2022 against 9,000 in 2021, and this increase in activity is not necessarily a good signal. “The activity had dropped a lot during the Covid crisis and in 2021 we had returned to our pre-2020 levels. In 2022, we have an increase of 11% on all the amounts we have lent, it is very significant. The last time we saw that was 2008-2011 with the previous financial crisis, we can be a kind of barometer of a difficult social context. It is not that in Nantes, we are in waters quite similar to the French progression.

A worrying year 2023

Credit is open to everyone, and it is a way to get money quickly. The sign of financial difficulties for so many households. Most often, it is women and more particularly single mothers who come to borrow, notes Jean-François Pilet.“Overall we can come and end the end of the month, a car sale, we have had examples of taxes… There are very varied causes, overall this means that the population of Nantes is more suffering, needs more financial assistance over a short period, than it has had in previous years… Overall (this indicates that) a deteriorating financial health. We know that inflation is a factor of aggravation of poverty, we know that the inflationary context will be constant in 2023 so we should have a similar activity in 2023.”