With maintaining the trust of its 58 million customers one of its key priorities, the Crédit Agricole Group:
Whether in terms of savings products, loans or investments, the Group makes a commitment to its customers.
In addition to the Codevi savings account, which became the "Livret développement durable" (LDD) passbook account on 1 January 2007 in accordance with the application decree, the Regional Banks also launched the "Prêt d’économies d’énergie" (PEE) loan for the financing of energy-saving works in old homes under preferential terms. At end-2008, nearly 30,000 Regional Bank customers had taken out a “PEE” for a total of €300 million.
The Group's two networks also offer shared-return funds1 and socially responsible investment (SRI) funds.
IDEAM, a subsidiary of the Crédit Agricole Asset Management Group and the No. 1 asset management company in France focusing entirely on SRI, as well as the private banking business line, also provide investment products for institutional investors that take environmental, social and corporate governance criteria into account.
For example, since 2007, IDEAM has offered the Danone.communities unit trust, which combines financial investment with solidarity, thereby enabling investors to contribute to the development of socially-aware companies. This product is also distributed by the Crédit Agricole networks.
As confidence is measured and maintained on a daily basis and as close to the ground as possible, each Group company has developed its own ways of being able to listen to customers and handle their complaints pro-actively.
In addition to the Regional Banks’ biannual national customer satisfaction barometer, regional customer satisfaction surveys or even for each branch are led. Handling complaints is still the responsibility of each individual bank. Moreover In 2009, the Regional Banks will roll out a project to consolidate all claims at the national level.
LCL's listening to its customers entails a national barometer, internal surveys conducted by the network and, since 2007, a "sales compliance" barometer. Complaints are handled by the customer relations department, which is ISO 9001 certified and can be contacted 24 hours a day by telephone.
Lastly, consumer finance subsidiaries Finaref and Sofinco analyse customers' views via listening methods concerning all sales channels. Each has a complaints handling department, which is mentioned on loan offers.
In accordance with the FIDES compliance programme, each entity2 has a New Activities and New Products Committee that verifies the compliance of new products and services before they are launched. In addition, the MiFID directive3 has been rolled out within all of the Group's European entities concerned (see inset). This directive came into effect on 1 November 2007.
The group's customer-oriented quality procedures currently carry 37 active ISO 9001 certifications - including those held by the majority of customer relations centres - quality discussion forums at Group level to encourage sharing of best practices and a Quality Institute, with a hundred or so correspondents in charge of helping the various business lines in making progress.
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