Quality customer relations

Strong local roots

While the group has been actively providing customers with online facilities for many years, it does so in addition to maintaining a dense network of branches in physical proximity to its customers. These two complementary channels extend its ability to meet their expectations.

While the network of local banks and branches is designed first and foremost to meet our customers' requirements, the group also considers its economic impact in the places where it operates, in terms of:

• jobs
• local tax revenues
• a galvanizing role, particularly in rural areas.

Reflecting this, more than 90% of the group's lending decisions are taken locally.

The group regularly draws up a list of branches in towns and villages with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants on the basis of independent sources. The latest survey shows that nearly 20% of our branches are located in towns or villages with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants.

The group also measures its presence in France's 98 urban tax-free zones by identifying the number that have a branch within their boundaries or in close proximity. 47% of them are served by at least one branch.

Crédit Mutuel listens to its customers and takes care to maximize their satisfaction – and so treats customer complaints particularly seriously.

The regional groups implement the applicable European and national regulations on complaints, including Recommendation 2016-R-02 of November 14, 2016 on complaint handling, issued by the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR).

This has led them to set up a complaint-handling system that allows customers to submit complaints to the following parties:

• their advisor (the customer's usual contact person);
• the complaints department, if they have not received a satisfactory response from their advisor;
• the ombudsman, if part or all of their complaint is rejected or if the group refuses to deal with it.

The regional groups strive to respond to complaints as soon as possible, within the deadlines set by the regulations. Complaints are monitored so that corrective action can be taken when failings are brought to light.

The regional groups' websites contain details of these systems and how they are organized.

Each regional group manages customer complaints according to their own local process or the process recommended by the federation, depending on which is most appropriate for the organization. Two mediation systems are in place within the group, one covering four federal banks and their subsidiaries and the second covering one federal bank.

Recognized commitment

Preuve de la qualité de ses engagements, le Crédit Mutuel est reconnu à la fois comme la banque préférée des français¹, et se hisse de nouveau sur le Podium de la Relation Client® 2023² récompensant les grandes marques qui excellent en la matière dans leur quotidien.