Outstanding bank lending to corporates is rising at a faster pace in France than anywhere else in Europe: +4.5% year-on-year at end-November 2015, compared with +2.1% in the United Kingdom, +1% in Germany and an average of +0.9 % for the euro area as a whole. In fact, based on the responses given by business leaders to our surveys, it seems that applications for investment loans are generally accepted fairly readily, and the same seems to apply, more or less, to cash loans. Although difficult to measure, firms’ willingness to apply for loans appears to be strong. Surveys conducted by the ECB show similar results, and rank France on a par with Germany in terms of access to credit and willingness to apply for loans, well ahead of the other major countries in the euro area. Interest rates on loans are also lower in France than anywhere else in the euro area – by around 1 percentage point in the case of individual loans of up to EUR 250,000. With regard to today’s topic, however, there are a number of important distinctions that need to be made. Access to credit is markedly more difficult for VSEs than for other SMEs: –  fewer than 60% of applications for cash loans were accepted (i.e. granting of 75% or more of the requested amount) in the third quarter of 2015, compared with 74% for SMEs.
The CCB should increase resilience by ensuring that an additional buffer of capital is built up gradually during the boom, a buffer that can then be released to cushion losses in an eventual downturn. It thus limits the threat of vicious fire-sale spirals. Moreover, by increasing the relative cost of providing credit, the CCB should help to lean against the build-up of excesses. In addition, the buffer is designed in such a way that it can be implemented on a broad basis or can target specific segments of the credit market only. Currently, for instance, signs of a build-up of excesses in the Swiss credit market merely relate to the domestic mortgage and residential real estate markets. Thus, if the buffer were to be activated, it would be aimed solely at this segment of the credit market. Not least, a CCB is one of the key components of the reforms of international financial regulation (Basel III framework). It will be introduced by most countries within the next few years. In this context, criticism has been raised that an early introduction of the CCB would cause competitive disadvantages for the Swiss financial sector in international comparison. For various reasons, this criticism is invalid. First, the CCB will be activated only if deemed necessary; most of the time, it is likely to remain turned off. Second, if activated, the CCB would be applicable to Swiss banks and to subsidiaries of foreign banks in Switzerland, ensuring a level playing field.