Les trois âges de l’intermédiation financière de la Poste (1881-2010) : révélateurs des mutations des rapports sociaux

• Main Author: Nadège Vezinat
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Recherche & Régulation 2018-01-01
• Series: Revue de la Régulation
• Subjects: financiarization; Post Bank; saving money; bancarization; public facilities; State
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/regulation/12365

Financial services of French Post have played a key role to develop savings accounts in France. Since the Third Republic, postal services are linked to the State and have taken part in the process of bancarization in France. Post’s institutional trajectory participated in French banking offer and in mutations of social stratification as well. In this paper, I identify three historical periods of financial intermediation and make use of this periodization to shed a fresh light on social classes. These periods are characterized by the development of savings account for the one, by the specialization of banking products with a different relation to financial literacy as far as the second one is concerned and finally with a segmentation of customers banking since the French Post has been given the role to give access to bank services to the poor.