Episode 1: France Active, a shield against crises
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France Active, un bouclier anti-crise | Épisode 1
Une interview de Jonathan Leveugle, Directeur des aides aux entreprises pour la Région Île-de-France
France Active, a shield against crises
France is still a country of entrepreneurs: the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) recorded almost 850,000 companies created in 2020, i.e. almost 35,000 more than in 2019. Single-member companies in particular increased by 6% while “other types of companies remained stable, which for a crisis year is a remarkable performance, whereas economic activity fell by almost 10%” stated the newspaper Les Echos in January.
This trend is due to invaluable levers, the first being bank loans. We are launching a mini series today on lending institutions.
In the first episode we take a look behind the scenes at France Active Île-de-France. This organisation supports and finances people furthest from the labour market: in other words, those who have more difficulty obtaining a standard loan.
2020 marked a turning point, particularly in the history of France Active IDF: to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, the Ile-de-France region turned to France Active IDF and three other national networks of associations to manage the deployment of an emergency scheme called Resilience.
They had to design and deploy new systems of financial support… in record time!
The two associations in Île-de-France, France Active IDF and Initiative France IDF therefore set up an ad hoc organisation, Initiactive IDF, which was mobilised to help nearly 4,000 companies during the period.
Jonathan Leveugle, who was then in charge of the association, gives us an account of these memorable months.
Resilience becomes operational
“Since the end of the 80s, the public authorities have deployed a host of policies in aid of people furthest from the labour market,” states Jonathan. “These include business start-up assistance. Our network mobilises subsidies, guarantees, bank loans and equity, according to the type of project, as well as its stage of development.”
Indeed, France Active does not only support business creators: its missions also include the development, recovery and reorientation of existing companies.
Last year, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, the organisation launched a project called Resilience. It objective was to support companies from the Île-de-France region, as a supplement to the state-guaranteed loans (PGE) and the BPI recovery (Rebond) loans:
“The idea was to support organisations within the social and solidarity economy, business creators, takeover entrepreneurs and more generally all VSEs and SMEs that did not meet the standard criteria to receive a state-guaranteed loan or to be able to mobilise a recovery loan,” explains Jonathan Leveugle.
“The Regional Council, the Banque des Territoires and the local authorities met to look into new financial tools. Together with three other large national networks, they entrusted us with creating and managing a fund of €100 million. The four of us had to set it up in little over one month, with 70 partner authorities. We had to make risky choices in this extremely short period of time.”
One of these founding choices concerned the business software package, and it was in this context that the director of France Active Île-de-France met the Xloan team.
Two brand new tools
“The first question concerned the tools,” continues Jonathan Leveugle. “We quickly realised that we could not use only one tool from front to back office, because we had to have a common platform for receiving applications and at the same time an efficient tool for managing the sums with very high requirements.”
The four networks also ruled out the idea of opening up their respective information systems to the others. “It was too complicated, for reasons of governance of the information systems, their technical nature and speed. We needed to start off with something completely new.”
“We chose a front office tool and a back office tool: Xloan. With gateways between them, to transfer the data. We also deployed a robot (RPA) which made the task easier for us, because everything had to be deployed in a rush.”
Xloan was chosen on the recommendation of a user. “It is an efficient tool, which makes it possible to properly manage the sums of money. What worried us at first was our ability to be quick – because that really was our main objective. We received a lot of support: the Xloan team very quickly understood that requirement and was able to put in place a project and an SaaS platform within a very short period of time, to enable us to launch the first loans in less than two months. At first we did not need cascading functions: the basic ones met our needs. They were only interest-free loans.”
A series of encounters
Jonathan Leveugle stresses one aspect: the human element. In fact, he formed a good two-person team with Benoît Valentin, Xloan project expert. “As we do not have a CIO at the regional level, it was very nice! Benoît was really able to act as the intermediary between our teams and those of the software company, enabling us to get on in cultural terms and meet the deadlines to deploy the tool in July, in particular for the payment component.”
€135 million have been released to date, for about 7,000 companies. The funds represent a substantial collective mobilisation: “We have created 250 access points for the front office and 10 for the back office in Xloan. It works very well like that.
From the outset, we have operated in agile mode. We knew we had to have a system that made it possible to manage the sums of money, pay out the loans, draw up the contracts… and then do the reporting, manage the repayment of the withdrawals, but we didn’t need all that straight away… In July, the part for managing sums of money was therefore delivered to us first, and then the part for issuing contracts up to the release of the funds. At that time, we had nothing yet for the withdrawals and reporting component: that was given to us several months later.”
That was how the project could be set up. The system put in place offered another advantage: it reassured the financiers. Automation made it possible to easily indicate the amount X from sum A to sum B. “Reporting made it possible to inform each financier of the exact amount that had been invested and that was still to be received.”
This experience, with numerous players, operators and financiers, all on a large scale, established a few best practices over the long term. “The network of associations is very poorly equipped for managing loans and I think it was worth it to have a shared tool, in spite of all the governance problems that you can imagine.”
Jonathan Leveugle is proud of this extraordinary project, and ends by stating that it was exceptionally extended: “The project was supposed to finish at the end of 2020. But it worked so well that Valérie Pécresse pressed for it to be continued in 2021. The state approved her request… and all the authorities chipped in. Three other regions had set up a similar tool for interest-free loans for VSEs/SMEs in their territories, but the Ile-de-France region was the only one to continue it.”
