The online bank Boursorama, a subsidiary of Société Générale and a key element of its strategy, shortens its name to Bourso and adds an English-style “bank”, it announced on Wednesday. From October 2, “Boursorama Banque changes its name and logo to become BoursoBank!”, specifies an email sent to customers, a name presented as “simpler” but also “more accessible and more universal to speak to as many people as possible “.
This announcement comes two days after the presentation in London of the main strategic guidelines of the new general director of Société Générale Slawomir Krupa, which disappointed the markets, with the stock ending the day with a plunge of 12%. “Socgen” then displayed great ambitions for its online bank: it became the only vector of growth in terms of the number of retail banking customers in France with the objective for Boursorama to go from 5 million currently to more than 8 million in 2026.
To do this, the future BoursoBank will have to temporarily abandon profitability, effective since the start of the year, due to the investments necessary to win over customers. This will reduce gross operating income by 150 million euros between 2023 and 2025, Société Générale said on Monday, before results described as “substantial” for Boursorama, greater than “300 million euros from 2026”.
In the online banking sector, competition is becoming organized. The dedicated subsidiary of Crédit Agricole, BforBank, announced on Tuesday that it wanted to democratize its clientele after having long courted a wealthy population, and thus go from some 200,000 clients currently to 3 million in 2030. Like Boursorama, it is evolving its visual identity so as to be perceived as more modern.
The subsidiary of BNP Paribas Hello bank! It intends to benefit from the agreement concluded at the end of June with Orange, which puts an end to its banking activity, to grow and reach one million customers. The French market is also whetting the appetite of foreign “pure players”, the British Revolut and its 2.5 million customers in France or the German neobank N26, which plans to increase from 2.5 million to 5 million customers in the hexagon by 2025.