Crédit municipal de Caen no longer lends
The Caen branch of Crédit municipal de Rouen will close. What has long been called the “Mont-de-Piété” would no longer be praiseworthy enough, explains one of its leaders.
It will soon no longer be possible for people from Caen to go to the Municipal Credit on rue Fred Scamaroni. Without giving a closing date, the second manager of Crédit municipal de Rouen, Jean-François Pilet, confirmed the non-renewal of the lease for this branch. “The city of Rouen has decided not to continue with an under-active agency”, he specifies.
In France, the Crédit municipal is a public credit and social assistance institution which is the pawnshop monopoly. This activity is monopolistic and public in France, unlike countries like the United States where it is a private activity.
Commonly called “My Aunt”, this institution has its origins in the Italian “Mont-de-Piété” born in 1462 in the city of Perugia to fight against the abuse of excessively high interest rates. The Mont-de-Piété becomes a charity bank where all those who lack money can borrow by giving a pledge of guarantee, it is the birth of the “pawnbroker”.
Crédit municipal normand was born in Rouen in 1826. In 1955, it became a Public Establishment for Social Assistance, endowed with legal personality and financial autonomy. A credit institution since 1984, it is now part of the social and solidarity economy as a solidarity organization. Since then, a branch has existed in Le Havre and Caen, which will soon close.
The principle of pawnbroking is simple. A person with an identity document and proof of address and as much as possible the purchase invoice of the product, pledges valuables. These are often jewelry, watches, works of art, collectibles. They are appraised directly in the agency and in exchange for this deposit, a loan, determined by the value of the property on the public auction market, is granted.
Then, before maturity and at any time, it is possible to come and recover your valuables by repaying the amount of the loan as well as the interest (calculated in proportion to the number of months started). If it is not possible to repay the loan, either the contract is extended, renewed, or auctioned off for repayment. If the sale is greater than the loan, the surplus is returned to the person in the form of a bonus. If the balance is negative, the person owes nothing to Crédit municipal.
Gilles Déterville, municipal councilor (PS) of the opposition, on the initiative of its establishment in 2013, deplores the decision to close. During the municipal council of May 16, he questioned the mayor of Caen, Joël Bruneau on this subject, after discovering the non-extension of the lease: “There are lots of examples of people who are in trouble by the way and who have jewels, things that they cared about and that they want back”he then indicates to the Mayor.
“I got the figures from my Rouen counterpart, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, of the almost total absence of requests and the need for them to reconfigure the Rouen system, which is not having great success either. ( …) the activity was such that the municipal agent of Rouen no longer comes, so we simply terminated the lease”, answers Joel Bruneau.
It is developing everywhere except in Caen and Rouen then.
Gilles Déterville, municipal councilor (PS) of the oppositionto the municipal council, to Joël Bruneau, mayor of Caen
The latter, questioned by France 3 Normandy said to himself “shocked” the mayor tell him “that it is a service that is no longer useful.”
The elected PS hopes that the municipality will return to “his decision contrary to the interests of our fellow citizens in social difficulty”he writes in his press release published on his Twitter account.
In certain territories in France, in particular in Toulouse or even in the Vaucluse, the use of pawnbrokers has indeed been increasing for several months. The reason: the explosion in the prices of food and fuel and the rise in interest rates which made loans more expensive. But this trend cannot be denied in Normandy, indicates Jean-François Pilet.
There was a response from the use of pawnbrokers during the health crisis that Normandy experienced late and this rebound today in France is not currently seen in the region.
Jean-François Pilet, second manager of the municipal credit of RouenFrance 3 Normandy
If no date has yet been set for the closure of the Caen agency, the second manager indicates that “nothing is happening” before July 1 and insists: “Things will be put in place. There will be solutions for all customers.” With regard to the other branches of the Crédit municipal normand – Rouen and Le Havre – Jean-François Pilet specifies that he does not answer, for the moment, only in the case of Caen and that a “global communications” will take place at the end of June.