About Bpifrance uniqueness

For Nicolas Dufourcq, CEO of Bpifrance, “there’s no other Bpifrance in Europe today”. Bank for entrepreneurs, export credit agency, consulting agency, … Bpifrance indeed gathers in one institution all the offers companies may look for during their development.

 

Bank for entrepreneurs, lever for private banks

Bpifrance also draws private bank actors in supporting French entrepreneurs’ projects development. “We have a very strong leverage capacity on all our products. For example, for €1 of guarantee, we deploy €33 of private loans” illustrates Pascal Lagarde, Executive Director in charge of strategy, development, international affairs and ESG. The final aim is to encourage them during all their development phases, especially in their innovation capacity.

 

Supporting innovation

At Bpifrance, innovation is Paul-François Fournier’s favorite topic as the Senior Executive VP of Innovation. The public investment bank has implemented the French Tech Plan, Deeptech Plan and the industrial startups and SME Plan on the behalf of the French government. « Today, I see this hybrid model between a branch and a bank as a real added value« , he explains about his vision of Bpifrance, « especially in the ability to have a real customer vision, by adding skills and tools to focus on the needs of our customers.« 

 

Bpifrance and entrepreneurs, a story of proximity

Proximity is one of Bpifrance’s values, an essential one to follow a customer-centric vision. A concrete application of these values must be its 50 branches in every regions of the country, but also its 9 offices abroad. “The contact we create through our financing and direct investment schemes enables us to identify entrepreneurs’ needs very early on”, explains Guillaume Mortelier, Executive Director in charge of companies’ support. “It is very important to be in direct contact with entrepreneurs. This allows us to be very reactive in case of crises or emergency situations”, add Anne Guérin, Head of banking activities.