How will the transfer of Orange Bank customers to Hello Bank take place?

Hello Bank is ready to greet Orange Bank customers. According to an agreement unveiled this Tuesday, February 27, the French subsidiary of BNP Paribas will host the telephone operator's online banking portfolios. “For the moment, you have nothing to do,” assures Orange Bank in a note to its customers. The latter should receive a personalized letter from here to tell them “the next steps to come”. If customer accounts remain accessible, it is now impossible to open a bank account, a savings account or take out a personal loan on online banking.

On the other hand, on the Hello Bank website, we welcome these 400,000 potential new customers. And to win them over once and for all, the BNP sector is pulling out all the stops by offering them “an exclusive offer”. Hello Bank offers benefits of up to 430 euros for these new arrivals. To benefit from it, now ex-customers of Orange Bank must subscribe to a package of services: 80 euros will be paid for subscribing to a daily banking offer, vouchers of 100 euros will be distributed for use of Hello Start, the online bank's banking mobility service, 50 euros for subscribing to a savings account. And the list continues. Hello Bank also plans to set up a telephone line intended to guide new arrivals.

“Our teams are already mobilized to provide a simple and smooth transition for Orange Bank customers in France and Spain who will be able to benefit from all the services of the BNP Paribas group,” noted Thierry Laborde, Managing Director delegate of BNP Paribas, in a press release. On the other side of the Pyrenees, Cetelem, another subsidiary of BNP Paribas, will take over the Hispanic portfolios of Orange Bank.

This transfer seals the fate of Orange Bank. The operator's online bank was launched on the basis of the banking activities recently acquired from the insurer Groupama. But the dedicated subsidiary had been loss-making since its creation and the new general director of Orange, Christel Heydemann, announced in early 2023 a “strategic review” on the future of the subsidiary dedicated to financial services. Orange Bank, which claimed 3.1 million customers in Europe and Africa at the end of March 2023, aims to close this activity in France and Spain by 2025-2026.

The procedure for transferring customers through a commercial offer and not a repurchase strictly speaking recalls the agreement reached between Société Générale and ING as part of its withdrawal from the French market. The online banking subsidiary of Société Générale, Boursorama, was able to recover 315,000 ING customers in a few months, or around two thirds of eligible customers, thanks to a preferential offer. After offloading OCS and Orange Studio last January, the objective for Orange is to refocus its activities, in accordance with the strategic plan.