French state regulator puts the cash lost by SMEs to late payments at €15 billion
The annual report of the Observatoire des délais de paiement, run by the Banque de France, calculates that French SMEs would have had €15 billion in extra cash without the late payments observed, with an average delay of 13.6 days that puts France back above the European average. Over 9% of companies now face a "major delay" of more than 30 days.
The most telling figure isn't the total (€15bn) but where it comes from: not a credit insurer's barometer or a software vendor's survey, but the regulator itself — Banque de France, the credit mediator — documenting the problem and drawing an operational conclusion. The Observatoire also published a best-practices guide recommending, among its concrete measures, systematizing due-date reminders before a delay happens, rather than handling non-payment after the fact.
That's exactly the task AppH's Pack Accueil absorbs for an agency: a due-date or pending-document reminder sent at the right time, on a schedule set by the agency, with every send tracked. AppH never negotiates a delay or assesses a client's creditworthiness — that stays a human call, always — but it removes the mechanical follow-up work the Observatoire's guide identifies as the first line of defense against late payment.
For AppH
- This isn't just a private insurer's diagnosis anymore (Coface, see our 22 September piece): it's the state regulator officially recommending systematized due-date reminders as best practice against late payment.
- The €15bn figure gives the problem a national scale — it's not just one agency's cash flow, it's the competitiveness of the whole French SME fabric, domiciliation agencies included.
Against / the honest limit
- The Observatoire's guide covers all interbusiness relations, not specifically domiciliation networks with a physical front desk — no isolated sector data exists for that specific segment.
- The guide also recommends tools AppH isn't: contractual late penalties, formal notice, factoring. AppH covers the scheduled reminder, not the legal or financial arsenal around it.
That the regulator itself documents €15 billion in lost cash and recommends, as a first lever, a gesture as simple as a well-scheduled reminder confirms something important: the repetitive, low-judgment task weighs heavily at macro scale. An assistant that absorbs it without replacing the underlying decision doesn't solve everything, but it removes a real friction, documented by the state itself.
Reviewed by a human at AppH