LEP: its interest rate still threatens to retreat on August 1, 2025

With net inflation, the yield of the popular savings book (LEP) could be lowered again this summer. But several safeguards should limit the loss of return for savers.

The lull is confirmed on the price front. According to the final figures published this Tuesday, April 15 by INSEE, inflation outside tobacco has established itself 0.7% over one year in March 2025after only 0.7% only in February. Levels below 1% unpublished since February 2021, which confirms the marked reflux of inflation in the first quarter, while the price increase had been able to peak up to more than 6% in early 2023. A very good news, therefore, for the consumer portfolio, but a less favorable signal for the yield of regulated savings booklets. We are thinking in particular of booklet A and even more of the popular savings book (LEP), the rate of which is directly indexed to the evolution of prices.

A theoretical rate of LEP close to 1 % this summer

Recall that the LEP rate is revised twice a year, on February 1 and August 1. It depends on the average of inflation excluding annual tobacco over the six months preceding its revision. For the next adjustment, scheduled for August 1, 2025, the first three months are now known, with inflation excluding tobacco of 1% on average between January and March. As a result, if inflation should remain close to these levels in the spring, the theoretical rate of LEP would fall to 1%, against 3.5% currently. Or a brutal fall of 2.5 point of remuneration for the approximately 12.5 million LEP holders!

But that savers are reassured: the law provides that the LEP rate cannot be lower than that of the booklet has increased by 0.5 points. However, the rate of booklet A could fall to it 1.7% on August 1. Which would therefore guarantee a LEP floor rate of 2.2% on this same date. Second possibility: the intervention of the public authorities. During the last four revisions, the Banque de France and the Ministry of the Economy have already devoted the formula to support the rate of this booklet reserved for the most modest savers. On February 1, 2025, for example, the LEP rate had been maintained at 3.5%, while the strict application of the formula should have dropped him to 2.9% (2.4% of the booklet A + 0.5%). The final rate of the LEP for August 1, 2025 will be known in mid-July, after publication of the final figures for the inflation of the first semester in full.