Désintermédiation ou diversification financière ? Le cas des pays développés

Measuring an intermediation rate is a good means to characterize, in a synthetic way, the importance of financial intermediaries in a given economy and their positions towards the finance market expansion. This article aims at presenting and discussing the results for France, by replacing them in a chronological perspective and adding some relevant international comparisons, enabling to assess convergence of financial systems in Europe and in the world. Beyond a quite sizeable decrease of the financial intermediation rate in France over the covered period, these results indeed stress the growing part of the Rest of the world, while financing of the national economy by resident financial intermediaries (FI) diminishes. Conversely, resident FI have developed their operations with the Rest of the world, diversifying thus their customers. A broader view of the intermediation concept is then proposed in order to put in perspective the so-called decline of financial intermediation. A complementary view of intermediation revenues enables to measure the evolution of remunerations gained by resident FI and to understand the changes that made it possible to maintain (or increase) their revenues through the key part played by FI on capital markets. These structural trends confirm that their commitments inside economies have evolved rather than diminished. Financial intermediation thus remains strongly rooted at the heart of the modern economy.