BNP Paribas Personal Finance

1/ Promoting responsible lending

A long-term commitment

BNP Paribas Personal Finance is committed to promoting the growth of responsible lending through a vision that is simultaneously simple and demanding: to encourage access to credit for as many people as possible at the same time as combating overindebtedness. So ever since 2004, the company’s commercial brand Cetelem has been explaining the nature of its business, its commitment and its intentions to help customers put their plans into action at the same time as securing their future and campaigning for the responsible distribution of credit and clear consumer information. Initiated in France, this commitment is gradually being extended to other countries, including Portugal and Italy. In Italy, Findomestic has taken the decision to focus on joint responsibility, which means sharing responsibility with the customer, and offering tailored solutions adapted to individual resources.

Boosting customer confidence

In pursuing its responsible lending objectives, BNP Paribas Personal Finance focuses its initiatives on a number of key areas:

• combating overindebtedness by ensuring that individual plans are realistic and that applicants have sufficient resources to repay their borrowings, and by setting monthly payments compatible with household budgets;
• encouraging access to credit for as many people as possible through a diverse and personalized range of products and services offered through multiple channels;
• providing flexible support to each customer – for example, some products offer options like increasing or decreasing monthly payments or switching from a variable rate to a fixed rate – by listening carefully to individual needs. Every year in France, BNP Paribas Personal Finance acts in the best interests of its customers by declining around one-third of all the loan applications it receives.

Developing responsible product

BNP Paribas Personal Finance has designed a range of competitive loans offered in combination with responsible services. In France, the company may offer the customer a personalized budget assessment that offers the option to restructure monthly payments at any time, and even to settle the loan early, either in full or in part. Some products are offered under the “satisfaction or your money back” commitment, which gives customers 30 days to change their minds and cancel their loans. Lastly, customers are offered the opportunity to secure their loans with effective insurance cover for death, permanent disability, unemployment, etc.

Encouraging clear information

BNP Paribas Personal Finance has set up the first responsible lending information website: www.moncreditresponsable.com. This non-commercial website fulfils an essential purpose: providing consumers with the information and services they need in order to live within their means by using credit responsibly.

Publishing responsible lending indicators

It was in 2006 that BNP Paribas Personal Finance gave its commitment to publish three key responsible lending indicators every year:

• the rate of applications declined;
• the percentage of accounts with unblemished payment records;
• the rate of risk.

The company is committed to obtaining the best-possible rating for all hese indicators.

Offering an independent mediation service in France

In France, BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the first specialist lender to introduce its own mediation system. Headed by lawyer Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie, who is not an employee of the company, this initiative was introduced at the beginning of 2010 and complements the range of customer support services provided by the company as part of its commitment to responsible lending and customer satisfaction. This mediation service offers an additional channel of recourse for those Cetelem personal customers who feel that they have not received a satisfactory response after making a complaint. The mediator has complete freedom to investigate accounts, and her recommendations are binding on the company.

Making our convictions clear

Since 2005, BNP Paribas Personal Finance has published the Question de responsabilité magazine as part of explaining its business, the nature of its commitment and its support for responsible lending. This publication is distributed internally to staff, and externally to public opinion formers.

2/ Encouraging staff career development and promoting diversity

The PFM management model

In promoting employee loyalty, developing the skills of its men and women and attracting the most talented people, BNP Paribas Personal Finance is able to rely on PFM, its managerial and human relations model. This model has four key strands: the reciprocal commitment between the company and its employees, key aspects of practical management, a new style of internal communication designed to keep employees better informed on a day-to-day basis, and HR resources that are consistent with our managerial model. At the heart of this model lie the concept of customer service and the reaffirmation of customer satisfaction as a priority challenge.

Strengthenting the skills and resources management policy

The changes made to the company’s business model have created more opportunities than ever for its people. In responding to the needs of the company and the aspirations of its staff, BNP Paribas Personal Finance is introducing a tailored policy of skills management and is progressively strengthening its individual career management teams around the world. The goals of these initiatives include encouraging greater internal mobility between jobs, countries and within the BNP Paribas Group, as well as internationalizing job profiles and careers. As a direct result, BNP Paribas Personal Finance is pursuing its commitment to training, and is devoting significant resources to employee development. One excellent example of this commitment in action is the range of management training courses, which has been redesigned on the basis of the PFM and tailored to meet the needs of all managers.

Formulating a balanced reciprocal contact

Reciprocal commitments form the basis of a clear and equitable relationship between the company and its people. These commitments aim to achieve a permanent reconciliation between the company’s need for performance and its fundamental respect for human values.

Promoting diversity

BNP Paribas Personal Finance has made diversity a priority of its human resources policy and has, for many years now, brought forward voluntary measures to support gender equality, ethnic diversity, generational diversity and the inclusion of disabled people in the workplace. These commitments have been applied in many countries that have decided to adopt and implement them as part of daily working life. Having signed the diversity charter in 2006, the company was awarded the Diversity label in January 2009, enabling it to join BNP Paribas as one of the first seven French companies to be awarded this distinction.

Taking action to ensure equality in the workplace

In November 2005, BNP Paribas Personal Finance became the first financial institution to be awarded the Égalité professionnelle femmes et hommes (Workplace Gender Equality) label by the French Ministry of Social Cohesion. This label was renewed in March 2009. The company is also a founder member alongside L’Oréal, Orange and PSA Peugeot Citroën of the ‘European Fund for Professional Equality’ set up in April this year.

Equality of opprtunity

The initiatives to promote diversity and equality of opportunity are structured around practical training, sponsorship and recruitment measures. The company’s French customer relationship centers have put in place many initiatives to make it easier for people in difficulty to re-enter the world of work; initiatives like ‘Paris Jeunes’ (Paris Young People) in Marseille, which provided support for eight unqualified young people to work towards a school-leaving or vocational qualification. The employment and integration of disabled people is also a priority action area. BNP Paribas Persoal Finance showed its commitment at the end of 2009 by hosting a Disability Awareness Week for French employees.

3/ Social engagement via the Cetelem Foundation

The Cetelem Foundation for Money Management Education

In 2010, BNP Paribas Personal Finance in France made the decision to extend its support for responsible lending by moving forward the mission of the Cetelem Foundation, which is now committed to providing money management education as a route to preventing overindebtedness. The company is convinced of the role that a sound financial culture can play in preventing problems of social exclusion and overindebtedness. Learning to manage money through budgeting, understanding how to read a bank statement and being able to evaluate your own financial situation are all important skills that can help people to avoid taking excessive risks. The Cetelem Foundation has set itself the priority of addressing young people, with special focus on trainees and young people at the induction stage of their careers. In practical terms, the Cetelem Foundation is designing personalizable turnkey learning tools, which it then makes available to its partners in the voluntary sector for their trainers to use as part of money management education programs. By favoring a practical and interactive approach designed to address the concerns of young people and families, these resources aim to provide an understanding of products and how best to use them, as well as how to control a budget and take personal responsibility for financial issues. Company employees motivated by this commitment can also pass on their expertise by taking part in training courses.

Microcredit

BNP Paribas Personal Finance has been involved in microcredit for a long time, working alongside ADIE (the Right to Economic Initiative association) and CRESUS (the French Regional Chambers of Social Overindebtedness) to encourage social and employment integration for those excluded from obtaining traditional credit. In addition to financial support, the company is involved via skills sponsorship, and provides these not-for-profit organizations with the expertise of its own staff in terms of loan granting and/or risk management procedures.

4/ Helping to protect the planet

Building a global approach

At the end 2007, BNP Paribas Personal Finance took the decision to create a formal structure for its environmental policy. The resulting Oxygène program has enabled it to develop a global and practical approach with twin goals: internally to encourage eco-responsible behavior within the company and amongst its people, and externally to encourage the funding of environmentally responsible consumption through ‘green’ products and services.

Raising employee awareness

Internally, the Oxygène program includes the conducting of a carbon balance audit (Bilan Carbone®). Conducted in France, the first audit of 73 company sites highlighted two main sources of carbon emissions: travel and the consumption of paper and energy. On completion of the analysis, the company gave a number of commitments to reduce its carbon consumption and emissions. These included maximizing the use of recycled paper, introducing a more effective waste sorting system, developing the use of videoconferencing in all 33 of its operating countries, encouraging car pooling and educating staff in eco-driving techniques. As part of ensuring the long-term effectiveness of this approach, the performance achieved by these initiatives will be measured and analyzed. A carbon balance audit of data collected in 2009 is now in progress, and plans are in place to extend the initiative to those countries where the company has the greatest presence.

Encouraging responsible comsuption

In terms of customers, the business section of the Oxygène program includes a more wide-ranging initiative to develop a range of ‘green’ Cetelem products. In October 2010, the company began marketing ‘green’ products and services, including a refund equivalent to the automobile registration cost for customers taking out loans to purchase ‘clean’ vehicles with a low CO2 emissions specification, and a subsidized rate for those financing electric vehicles.