Everyone knows “my aunt”. Crédit municipal de Paris owes this nickname to the Prince de Joinville, son of King Louis-Philippe, who, to honor a gambling debt, pledged his gold watch there and claimed, in response to his mother who was worried about not seeing it on him, that it was at his aunt’s house. Even today, this institution lends money to people with a temporary lack of liquidity. On the same principle, it can advance sums ranging from 20,000 to 6 million euros to art collectors looking for new money.
This service is offered by CC Art – for Conservation Center -, a department of Municipal Credit. Its director, Nicolas Chwat, insists on the simplicity of the process and the speed of release of funds. To begin such an operation, simply contact Municipal Credit and a relationship manager will follow your file from start to finish. The work of art offered as security for the loan will be appraised and a lot of information will be requested from you: origin of the object, purchase invoice, restorations carried out, income declarations to check your repayment capacity, etc. Once the value of the well fixed, depending on market prices, a loan ultimately may be granted to you up to 66% of this value.
A quick response
Unlike a traditional bank loan, you will not wait weeks to get a response. These procedures only take a few days on average. The loan, generally lasting eighteen months, is accompanied by an APR interest rate (annual percentage rate) currently set at 5.3%, including custody costs for your works. Nicolas Chwat specifies that, in more than 99% of cases, borrowers repay and recover their goods, stored in the premises of Crédit municipal.
The customer profile is varied, from the middle class to relatively wealthy categories. Among the files handled, a collector of hourglasses who needed money to acquire a rare piece, owners of SMEs who seek to develop their activity, lords who, to finance the opening of their residence to the public, deposited with CC Art of family portraits, or even individuals wishing to provide for their children’s education. For these lovers of beautiful objects, art takes on its full meaning, that of a window open to the future.