Price increases fell sharply in September according to INSEE. Which raises fears of a plummet for the yields on your savings accounts on February 1st.
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– Year-on-year inflation fell to 1.2% over the past month. It was still at 4.9% over one year last September.
Will inflation be a thing of the past by the end of the year? According to the provisional results from INSEE, published this Friday, September 27, it has in any case slowed down significantly this month, since it fell to 1.2% over one year. Since the start of the year, the decline has been notable, since the price increase was still 3.1% year-on-year last January. While this is good news for household wallets, it is on the other hand a hard blow for the remuneration of their regulated savings accounts (Livret A, LEP), which should plummet at the time of their next revision. , on February 1st.
If the deadline still seems somewhat distant, we must not forget that the yield of the Popular Savings Account (LEP) is indexed to the increase in consumer prices over the six months preceding its revision. Thus, for February 1, 2025, it is the average inflation between July and December 2024 which will be taken into account, the consumer price index for the month of December being revealed by INSEE in mid-January. Also, we already know half of the formula which will be used to calculate the future LEP rate: between July and September, the price increase was on average 1.7% over one year. This suggests, if inflation continues to decline over the next three months, a significant reduction in the LEP rate, which could go from 4% to 1.7%.
The LEP rate still higher than that of the Livret A
Fortunately, the level of inflation is not the only determinant of the return of the LEP, since it must also always be 0.5% higher than that of the Livret A. However, the rate of the latter should not plummet in the same proportions, because if its calculation also depends on inflation measured over the six months preceding its revision, it is only half of the equation. The other half also takes into account the half-yearly average of interbank rates (€STR), i.e. the rates at which banks borrow from day to day. Slowing inflation requires that these rates are also falling, as a result of recent decisions by the European Central Bank (ECB) to lower its key rates. But they should settle, over the last six months of the year, at 3.45% on average.
Result: taking into account the average of inflation and interbank rates, the Livret A rate would land at 2.6%, rounded up to the nearest tenth. A rate which would therefore prevent that of the LEP from falling to less than 3.1% on February 1st. This is without taking into account that this savings product reserved for the most modest households could also benefit from a new boost from the government, with, for example, a return maintained at 3.5%. A gesture that the Banque de France and Bercy had already agreed to during two last revisions of the LEP yield, with a rate maintained respectively at 5% on February 1, 2024, then at 4% on August 1 despite lower inflation.
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