6. French Financial Market and the French Financial Consumer

French citizens tend to have relatively high levels of savings; however this does not contribute to strong individuals’ support to the financial market. Traditionally in developed market, the financial assets of most citizens are constituted by their pension funds managed on the basis of the constitution of an individual account, process known as capitalisation whereby each individual owns a set of financial assets, generally through a fund management company. On the contrary, in France, the pensions, for the most part, are based on repartition whereby the workers pay on an ongoing basis the pensions of those retired. The system will be explained further later in this chapter. The result is that financial assets are owned by a limited fringe of the population.