Fresh from opening a representative office in Paris, Acquis Insurance country manager for France and BeneLux Frederic Guez remains upbeat about the year ahead. Early deal wins, growing partner demand for cross-border solutions and a strong pipeline suggest that even in a mature and contracting market, momentum is still possible for insurers and lessors prepared to think regionally.

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Frederic Guez, country manager – France and BeneLux at Acquis Insurance exudes good cheer and optimism as he eyes up the year ahead.

With the year still in its early stages, and working alongside sales manager Cyrill Mascaud, he has recently overseen the opening of a representative office in Paris to drive expansion into the local leasing and asset finance market.

It is a move that is also proving an immediate success.

After saturating the UK market, France was the natural choice for Acquis, especially since many large financial institutions have either located their headquarters there or have a sizeable office presence.

Major equipment leasing providers include offshoots of leading banks, such as BPCE Lease/ BPCE Equipment Solutions, part of major French bank Groupe BPCE, offering tailored lease finance solutions for professional equipment. Expanding its footprint, notably through acquisitions, BPCE has become a leader, not only in France, but right across Europe becoming the fourth largest capitalised bank in the euro zone.

Others are BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions, offering leasing solutions for corporate equipment, including options to bundle maintenance and services, and Franfinance, which is part of Société Générale Group.

As well as these, invariably there are also independent and specialised companies operating in the market. They include Leasecom (creator of Leasing Circulaire), advocating leasing with a sustainability focus and equipment lifecycle management. Onliz is a marketplace platform dedicated to IT equipment, plus there are “manufacturer captives” too, such as Xerox Financial Services, Siemens Lease, and Toyota Material Handling that designs, manufactures and services its forklifts, warehouse equipment, and automation solutions.

Many of these lenders are present throughout Europe with multiple subsidiaries, Guez explains, and they continue to invest and grow, offering ample business opportunities, including Merca in Germany for Credit Agricole, and various joint ventures that BNP continue to sign with major equipment manufacturers.

Encouragingly, Acquis is finding there is increasing demand from these partners to structure pan-European partnerships with common product structures and legal setups, compliant with both domestic and EU regulations, helping to offset what has been a generally weak market in France lately due to economic and regulatory uncertainty tied to its political crisis.

Local challenges

Setting up a new office was not without its challenges of course, including finding a suitable location. Acquis ultimately opted for the 17^th arrondissement, the central and strategic district of the French capital that offers proximity to its key partners and prospective clients. A wise choice, too, as it is conveniently located for many of the city’s iconic landmarks and cultural offerings, including Les Batignolles, Martin Luther King Park, and of course the splendid Arc de Triomphe.

There were difficulties nonetheless in finding insurance for the office, as the Acquis French operation is a subsidiary of Acquis Insurance Management B.V., a Dutch private limited company. It also meant recruiting the right people, possessing the skillsets and experience, and providing a balance between local market expertise and the high-level strategic mindset to manage global relationships in multiple locations with global senior decision makers.

Only a few months down the line, though, and with a new year in prospect, Guez notes how things are developing favourably. “Since we opened the office, our business is growing and we have already signed two major deals, with Toyota Material Handling and Xerox Financial Services,” he notes, with justifiable enthusiasm.

“We have put in place the strongest pipeline ever for Acquis France,” he adds, which is no mean feat considering that France is a mature market that was not growing at all in 2025.

Difficult times

Following the inevitable fast-paced rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, the French market subsequently stagnated in 2024, followed by a discouraging decline in 2025, although fortunately there were some notable differences in performance, so not everything went downhill.

Thomas Nokin, founder and CEO of Basikon, a French-based fintech concurs. He notes how the market recovered well after the pandemic, but also how the repayment of state-guaranteed loans offered during the pandemic prompted a rise in small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) bankruptcies.

According to Allianz Trade, providing trade credit insurance and risk management solutions, the number of bankruptcies in France rose for a fourth consecutive year in 2025, by 3.4%, to a new record high of 68,500, with transport & logistics most affected (a rise of 61%), followed by information & communication (up 42%), retail and automotive sales (by 40%), and hospitality and restaurants (34%).

Companies cited late payments, cash flow strains, and rising operational and financing costs as the main reasons for their difficulties.

That is hardly surprising. As in much of Europe, especially across the euro zone, where local financial institutions tend to respond fluently to the common monetary policy adopted by the European Central Bank, France has faced tightened monetary conditions and elevated inflation in recent years. This has generally raised the cost of financing for banks and lessors and that, in turn, has raised lease rates for clients, while also dampening the demand for capital-intensive investments.

The parlous nature of French politics has hardly helped, with governance instability and the lack of a clear direction on fiscal and corporate policies, and the ensuing budget cuts forcing corporate managers to freeze investment plans in the wake of the hung parliament that emerged following the 2024 legislative elections.

Local reports point to tensions between politicians urging fiscal restraint, and those favouring greater environmental ambition, especially in the context of competing priorities such as price inflation control and fiscal deficit limits.

The Fonds Vert, a flagship support mechanism for green investments saw a substantial decline in funding in 2025 (relative to 2024), reflecting broader fiscal tightening. Authorities have been struggling to maintain fiscal control, prompting credit rating agencies to downgrade French sovereign borrower creditworthiness.

As of end-June 2025, the country boasted an unenviable general government debt burden slightly exceeding €3.4 trillion, or 115.8% of GDP, according to Eurostat. It is almost double the EU limit of 60% of GDP, with the general government deficit standing at 5.4% of GDP.

In September, Fitch lowered its rating from AA- to A+, and the cost of borrowing is higher in France – at more than 3.5%, according to the benchmark 10-year government bond yield – than in Greece, Italy, Portugal, or Spain.

This unfavourable macro-fiscal-political picture helps to explain data for the first half of last year showing the French leasing market performing much worse than comparator countries, including the UK and Germany, as well as the CEE region. Contrasting with the growth in new business volume elsewhere, in France it contracted by 6% (year-on-year), according to Leaseurope.

Figures supplied by the French Finance Association indicate a 9.5% contraction in equipment new business volume in 2025, to €7.273 billion, and a 5.9% drop to €17.377 billion for vehicles.

The new year will likely be similar too, Nokin expects, unless economic growth picks up, and on that score hopes may well be dashed despite some improvement to business confidence that has yet to become firmly established.

Discouragingly, the OECD’s latest economic forecast (issued in December 2025) points to real GDP growth in France of just 1% for 2026, rising only modestly from the 0.8% currently estimated for 2025, with domestic and international uncertainty continuing to weigh on investment decisions. This will almost certainly lead to bankruptcy cases plateauing at a high level, even if the number of cases slightly declines as some experts suggest.

“Current political instability has increased uncertainty,” warns Nokin, and many market participants are in a familiar “wait-and-see mode.”

Room for optimism

Guez nevertheless notes how some of his firm’s business partners still enjoyed double-digit growth last year, fuelled by digitisation of business flows through Application Programming Interfaces, as well as the use of market leasing platforms, and the expansion of distribution channels and acquisitions by major banks in recent years, such as SGEF by BPCE and Olinn by Crédit Agricole.

What seems to set the French market apart too is its comparative resistance to a weak economic environment than many other EU countries thanks to innovation in financial structuring, and rising insurance and risk appetite that along with inflation has propelled growth in the size of assets financed. Importantly, innovative, and agile players have ample room to grow, including big banks that are aggressive and investing a lot in leasing, offering a more rapidly growing market than retail banking.

The market has its own peculiarities too, notes Nokin, just as, for example, hire purchase only exists in the UK. In France, “Location avec Option d’Achat” (Lease with Option to Buy, LOA) and “Location Longe Durée” (Long Term Leasing, LLD) have different legal frameworks, whereas in many countries both would be treated simply as operational leases.

Meanwhile, the sectoral story is similar to that in other European countries, including the UK, with green finance and sustainable equipment driving the market.

Governments have been actively steering public and private financing towards climate and ecological goals, first through the National Strategy for the Financing of the Ecological Transition (SPAFTE). This is a multi-year roadmap setting out the pathways for mobilising capital for climate mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, water, and pollution reduction, with the most recent edition maintaining emphasis on sustainable finance. Second, there are mechanisms such as sovereign green bonds directing capital to climate/environmental projects.

As in many other countries, the emphasis is on solar, with the financing of rooftop, or ground-mounted photovoltaic panels, as well as car battery recharging, e-bikes, wind energy equipment, including onshore wind turbines and small wind installations for businesses and farms, plus biogas, biomass, and hydropower equipment.

These public instruments and frameworks aim to either complement or direct finance, including leasing, towards “green” outcomes.

The asset size is higher than average, and banks provide finance for these assets with a bigger risk at an elevated rate, with higher margins and insurance where possible, when insurers become comfortable with the risk, Guez notes, while Nokin adds that although energy transition-related assets will certainly remain a niche, the leasing of used assets will also increase.

Usage is becoming more important than owning an asset as technology advances, rapidly making equipment obsolete. “Reselling or getting rid of an old asset is costly, uncertain and time consuming,” says Guez, adding that “equipment lessors and manufacturers (sometimes specialised brokers) do it better and in an industrialised way.”

Government incentives

The government is meanwhile incentivising the industry is numerous ways. As Guez explains, a major development from the 2024 Finance Act is a significant new tax credit to encourage investment in green industrial production, including batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and heat pumps. The credit can cover as much as 20% to 45% of eligible investment costs, and it applies to equipment and machinery production.

These tax incentives help lower the net cost of equipment acquisitions, which in turn can boost leasing demand, since lessees often choose leasing to preserve cash while benefiting from tax breaks. “This aligns French policy with broader green growth strategies and it makes certain green investments more financially attractive,” he says.

Speculating about future regulatory changes, unsurprisingly perhaps Guez believes there will be more integration of environmental criteria. The country has been refining its tools, such as budget green reporting, tracking environmental impacts of spending and fiscal incentives as part of the budget process.

There are additionally potential stricter ESG disclosure requirements or impact measurement standards for financial institutions (banks and lessors), aligning with EU sustainable finance rules. “This could all lead to tighter environmental standards for what counts as green financing and more transparency/reporting obligations.”

Moreover, the broader environmental tax framework continues to move in the direction of the “polluter pays.” Although not specifically leasing-focused, this influences investment choices and the total lifecycle costs of equipment.

As for Acquis it will continue to offer insurance solutions that support its clients’ business objectives, whether it be through its Amplio point-of-sale solution, Supra, for protecting leased equipment, or Omnia, its “bundled” solution, ensuring full integrated protection.

It all goes to show that while France is in a difficult position, both politically and in terms of its macro-fiscal make-up there is still ample opportunity for innovative and agile players providing post-pandemic financing and insurance solutions.