ions applicable either to categories of lenders (such as insurance companies) or to types of transactions (such as intra-group cash pooling).
Any violation of the banking monopoly is punished by three years of imprisonment and a € 375,000 fine in accordance with article L.571-3 of the CMF. It is being specified, however, that, pursuant to Article 131-38 of the French criminal code, when the offence is applied to a legal person, the latter may encounter a fine of up to five times the initial amount, i.e. € 1,875,000.
FinTechs may also provide loan brokerage services provided that they are registered at the ORIAS in accordance with article L519-3-1 of the CMF.
Additional comments regarding the legal situation for loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage, finetrading-, and ancillary services or what FinTech’s must be aware of in this business area
It should be emphasised that FinTechs which request a financing company license will have an activity limited to credit provision only and will not benefit from the passport mechanism to offer their services in another European member state.
Economic conditions
Market size for loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage-, finetrading- and ancillary services and biggest companies in this business area
Regarding factoring, the Association française des sociétés financières (“ASF”) decrypted a significant growth in the domestic factoring market between 2020 and 2021. The amount of operations reached € 236,388 million in 2021, a growth of 8.2%.
As for loan brokers, especially mortgage credit brokers, the ORIAS decrypted a significant growth in registrations between 2016 and 2017 where the numbers of registrations reached 22,778 in 2017 up from 22,459 in 2016.
This growth was expected. It aligns with the important share of mortgage credits given in France.
However, it is believed that only 20% of borrowers resort to a loan broker. Which is far from the 60% or so borrowers that resort to brokers in other European member states such as Spain.
Additional comments regarding the economic situation for loan-giving-, factoring-, brokerage-, finetrading- and ancillary services or what FinTech’s must be aware of in this business area
N/A.