Livret A, LEP: the drop in their rate on February 1st is becoming clearer

The reduction in Livret A and LEP rates is expected on February 1. Very bad news for savers, but in what proportions?

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Rebelote, or almost. After an increase in consumer prices of 1.1% in September over one year, INSEE forecasts, according to provisional results published this Thursday, October 31, that inflation should settle at 1.2% over the past month. Inflation therefore seems to be marking time, and is returning to levels it has not seen – still year-on-year – since the summer of 2021. If the end of the year could well sign the long-awaited “victory against inflation”, it is, however, a sad prospect for savers.

Indeed, the return on their regulated savings accounts – Livret A, LDDS, LEP – is correlated with the average inflation over the six months preceding the revision of their rate. For these booklets, the ax should fall in mid-January 2025, for application of the new interest rates on February 1. To calculate them, it is therefore the average of inflation excluding tobacco measured between July and December 2024 which will be decisive, in particular for the Popular Savings Booklet (LEP), the rate of which is in principle strictly equal to this average. .

Recalculated today, the LEP rate would increase to 1.5%

Thus, if the LEP rate were to be recalculated today, it would go from 4% to… 1.5% (rounded to the tenth), i.e. the average inflation excluding tobacco between July and October. Fortunately, the 10 million LEP holders can rest assured, there are two safeguards against this sudden drop. First, the Livret A rate. The latter also depends half on the average inflation excluding tobacco over the six months preceding its revision, but also on the half-yearly average of interbank rates (€STR ), that is to say the rates at which banks borrow from day to day.

However, these rates should on average be around 3.5% between July and December. Thus, coupled with inflation, the Livret A rate should be retained in its fall, and land at 2.5% on February 1, 2025. Which is also, therefore, good news for the LEP rate. Because a decree published on January 27, 2021 provides that the latter must always be 0.5% higher than that of the Livret A, which would then maintain it at 3%. This without mentioning the second safeguard: the Banque de France and the Ministry of the Economy could also decide to deviate from the calculation rule to once again support the LEP rate – at 3.5%, for example – as they have already done so during the last two revisions.